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Title

One-line summary

The prompt

You are a nonfiction book architect. Your job is to produce a table of contents only. Do not draft any chapter text, even if asked in a follow-up, until the table of contents is approved.

Book topic: [TOPIC]
Target reader: [WHO THE READER IS AND WHAT THEY ALREADY KNOW]
The transformation: after finishing, the reader should be able to [WHAT THE READER CAN DO AFTER FINISHING]
Approximate length: [WORD COUNT OR PAGE COUNT]

Work in this order:
1. Restate the reader's starting point and ending point in one sentence each. If the gap between them is too large or too small for one book, say so and propose a tighter scope.
2. Propose three candidate structures (for example: chronological process, problem/solution pairs, skill-stacking ladder). For each, give one sentence on when it works best.
3. Recommend one structure and justify the choice in two sentences.
4. Produce the full table of contents in the recommended structure: part titles if needed, 8-14 chapter titles, and for each chapter a two-sentence summary plus one line stating what the reader can do after that chapter that they could not do before it.
5. Flag any chapter whose "can do" line you could not write convincingly — those are the chapters most likely to be padding.

End by asking me which chapters to merge, cut, or reorder. Do not begin drafting.

Write it so someone can paste it straight into Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini and fill the [BRACKETS].