Find the actual story in a spreadsheet full of numbers
A table of correct numbers isn't the same thing as an insight.
- Use it for
- Anyone who's stared at a data export knowing there's something in it.
A spreadsheet full of correct numbers isn't automatically an insight — most people's first pass at "analyzing" data is really just narrating it ("revenue was X, up from Y"), which is true and tells nobody anything they couldn't get from the table itself. The actual work is finding the relationship, trend, or outlier that the raw numbers don't announce on their own.
This prompt pushes past narration toward the specific claim the data actually supports.
When not to use this
If you just need the numbers reported accurately for a dashboard or status update, narration is the right output — don't force insight where a clean summary is what's actually needed. This is for when you suspect there's a real pattern and want help finding it.
Did this work?
You walk away with a specific, surprising claim the data supports — not a restatement of the numbers in sentence form.
Tested on claude-opus-5. Evidence status is draft; it moves to battle-tested only on recorded runs, never by hand.