On June 3, I suggested using a LLM as a way to gather activities for a newsletter for parents. Mike Caulfield in his The End(s) of the Argument substack takes this one step farther with advanced prompting to promote better results:
Anyway, to have it pull all the data I need while I get to be as lazy as possible I used a little pseudo-code technique I call “LLM paging” where you embed a command in the prompt that can later be used to iterate over a range of data.
I think in the near future we will get LLMs that are more comfortable doing these lengthy loops without stopping for human feedback, but for the time being this pseudo-code can tide you over.
Here is the code for grabbing events:
# Base Instructions
Search for cultural events in Europe happening week {#1} of July, and put them in a table with the date a description and a link. Use provided tips below.
There should be at least 34. Categories might include music festivals, cultural celebrations, specialty/quirky events, folkloric stuff, pride events, arts and performance, food and lifestyle, maritime and aviation. Check table for any duplicate entries and remove.
## Tips on date searching
When searching for events in certain date ranges, it is helpful to use "OR" logic with a series of specific dates, e.g. instead of searching for "july 3-july 9" search "july 3" OR "july 4" OR "jul 5" etc. within the date range.
Be aware of linguistic differences when searching dates, both language and formats.
## Tips on searching
Remember the specific links you find talking about each festival, you will use these links later in the table.
# Templates (run based on certain phrases/"hotkeys")
## Template hotkey="double check"
Look at each entry in the table and double-check dates, location, and links, and report any errors
## Template hotkey="next"
Replace {#1} in instructions with the next number (e.g. week 1 becomes week 2, week 2 becomes week 3)
By combining the vibe coding capabilities of the llm with the search functions released earlier this spring – you “teach” the llm how to a deeper and more thorough search.
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