Prompt cookbook

Copy these, change the words, and make them yours. They're grouped by what you want to make. After any build, you can always say "show me a preview" and then nudge it: "warmer", "slower", "more contrast", "add a glitch".

How to phrase it

Describe the result and the feeling, not the nodes. "A slow, hypnotic, deep-blue tunnel" works better than naming operators. The AI picks the operators.

Generative & abstract

"Create a feedback tunnel from noise with blur and displace, add bloom, and show me a preview."

Real output from the prompt above — a feedback network (blur + displace), captured live from TouchDesigner.

"Make an evolving reaction-diffusion pattern in greens and blacks, slow and organic."

Reaction-diffusion, simulated on the GPU.

"Build a flowing noise landscape in 3D with an orbiting camera."

A noise-displaced 3D terrain.

"Give me a strange-attractor visual with glowing particles on black."

A real de Jong strange attractor — orbit points glowing on black, with a Speed knob to evolve it. Captured live.

Audio-reactive

"Make an audio spectrum analyzer with colored bars that react to my music."

Live audio analyzed into a frequency spectrum (shown driven by a test signal — point it at your mic or a track).

"Create an audio-reactive particle galaxy driven by the beat, and preview it."

"Build a radial spectrum that pulses on the bass, warm colors."

What you'll get: an analysis chain (spectrum + level + beat) feeding a visual, usually with a Sensitivity knob. See the microphone permission note on macOS, or ask for a test tone instead of the mic while experimenting.

Camera & motion reactive

The camera counterpart to audio reactivity — drive a visual from movement or brightness in front of your webcam.

"Make a visual that reacts to movement in front of my webcam, and preview it."

"Drive the feedback amount from how much motion the camera sees."

"React to the room's brightness — bloom up when the lights come on."

What you'll get: an analysis chain exposing motion and brightness channels plus a Sensitivity knob. Like the mic, the live camera triggers the macOS permission popup — or ask for a synthetic test source to experiment without a camera.

Particles & 3D

"Create a particle system emitted from a sphere with turbulence and gravity, rendered as glowing sprites."

A particle galaxy (still frame — particle motion is too fine-grained to embed as a light clip).

"Make 10,000 particles that swirl like a galaxy."

A galaxy of points swirled by a vortex (still frame).

"Build a 3D scene with instanced cubes reacting to a noise field."

Instanced 3D cubes, spinning.

What you'll get: a particle or geometry system with live Drag / Turbulence / Gravity / Lifetime knobs to shape the motion.

Video & camera

"Pipe my webcam through edge detection, an RGB split and a feedback loop for a glitchy look."

The glitch / VHS look — scanlines, RGB split and datamosh (shown on a synthetic source rather than a live webcam).

"Play this video file on a loop with speed control." (give it the path)

A movie file loaded into a player with live Play / Speed controls (Big Buck Bunny, CC-BY).

"Take my webcam and make it look like an old, degraded VHS tape."

Text & titles

"Add the title 'OPENING SET' centered over this visual in white."

"Put the song name in the bottom-left corner in hot pink."

"Make a transparent lower-third text layer I can composite later."

Shown over a visual; the real layer is transparent, ready to composite.

What you'll get: a styled text layer (font size, color, alignment) composited over your visual or on its own transparent background — ready to send to output. Great for lyrics, titles, song names and credits.

Live performance & control

"Add knobs for feedback, zoom, spin and blur so I can perform this live."

"Animate the spin knob with a slow LFO."

"Make a tempo clock at 128 BPM and sync the movement to the beat."

"Set up two cues — 'intro' and 'drop' — that I can morph between."

"Let me control the main knobs from my phone."

"Map my MIDI controller's first fader to the Sensitivity knob."

Output & mapping

"Output the final visual to a full-screen window on my second monitor."

"Send this out over NDI so I can use it in OBS."

"Corner-pin this onto a projector and let me drag the corners."

A source warped through a corner-pin keystone — drag the four corners to line it up with a wall, screen or object.

"Record the output to a movie file for 30 seconds."

Fixing & understanding

"Something looks broken — check the network for errors and fix them."

"Explain what this network is doing, step by step."

"This is running slow — find the bottleneck and optimize it."

"Tidy up the layout so I can read it."

Working from your own notes (Obsidian vault)

If you keep an Obsidian vault wired up:

"Build tonight's set from my 'Friday' setlist note."

"Generate a visual from my 'deep ocean' moodboard."

"Save this look as a recipe in my vault and log it to my show diary."