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The AI traced our 1689 book to a castle library sale

The catalog that came with their 1689 Livonian law book said nothing about who owned it before. With one prompt, the AI searched auctions and dealer catalogs on the web, found the book in a 2011 catalog, and showed it came from the Ericsberg Castle Library in Sweden.

How it works

  1. They ask the AI to track down the provenance of their copy
  2. The AI searches the open web through auctions and dealer catalogs
  3. It finds the book listed in Centralantikvariatet Catalog 66
  4. They ask follow up questions and the AI dates the undated catalog to late 2011

Why it’s worth knowing

One prompt sent the AI through old auction and dealer catalogs until it found the exact sale listing for this one copy of a 1689 book.

Where it’s from

Summarized from a public post on blog.gdeltproject.org. See the original ↗

Upgraded prompt

A ready-to-use prompt for this idea, built from research on what makes AI agents do the job right: who the AI should be, the exact steps, and a check to make sure it was done the way you wanted.

1Who the AI should be
2The prompt, with the steps
3The check when it’s done
Upgraded prompts are coming soon.

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