PARTS stands for Persona, Aim, Recipients, Theme and Structure. It is a five element checklist for writing a Gemini prompt that produces something you can actually use, rather than something generic you then have to rewrite.
If you are here because a course or certification asked you the question, that is your answer. The rest of this page covers what each element does, the second version of the acronym you will run into, and how PARTS relates to the framework Google publishes in its own guides.
The five elements
| Letter | Element | What it does | Leave it out and you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| P | Persona | Who you want Gemini to be, or who you are. "Act as a Year 9 science teacher." | Output pitched at the wrong expertise level for your reader. |
| A | Aim | The action you want performed, stated with a clear verb. "Create", "rewrite", "summarise", "explain". | Gemini guesses the task and often answers a different question. |
| R | Recipients | Who the output is for. "For parents", "for a 200 level undergraduate class". | Generic tone and difficulty that suits nobody in particular. |
| T | Theme | The specific subject or concept. "Photosynthesis", "the causes of federation". | Broad, shallow content you have to narrow down by hand. |
| S | Structure | The format you want back. "As a lesson plan", "as a rubric", "as five dot points". | A wall of prose you then have to reformat yourself. |
Why you will see two versions of the acronym
Search for PARTS and you will find two expansions, and it is worth knowing about the difference before it catches you out in an assessment.
- Persona, Aim, Recipients, Theme, Structure. The more commonly cited version, and the one most course material uses.
- Persona, Act, Recipient, Theme, Structure. Appears across a number of educator guides, with Act in place of Aim.
In practice they mean the same thing. Aim and Act both point at the action verb that tells Gemini what to do, and Recipient and Recipients are the same idea. If you are being marked on it, use the wording in your own course material, because that is what the assessment was written against.
A worked example
Start with the kind of prompt most people type:
Before
"Write something about photosynthesis."
Now add the five elements, in order:
After
"Act as a Year 9 science teacher (Persona). Create a 40 minute lesson (Aim) for a mixed ability Year 9 class (Recipients) on photosynthesis (Theme). Set it out as a lesson plan with a starter activity, three main tasks and an exit question (Structure)."
Same topic, entirely different output. The second prompt is longer, and that is the point: every extra constraint is a decision Gemini no longer has to guess at, and guessing is what produces the bland answer you were about to rewrite.
PARTS and PTCF are not the same framework
This trips people up, because Google's own published prompting guidance for Gemini uses a different acronym: PTCF, meaning Persona, Task, Context and Format. PARTS appears in Google educator training and certification material rather than in the general Gemini for Workspace guides.
The two overlap heavily. Both open with Persona and both close by naming a format. Where they differ is the middle: PARTS breaks the audience and the topic out into their own elements, which suits classroom material where the year level changes everything. PTCF folds both into Context, which makes it more flexible for general business use.
If you are writing prompts for work rather than for a classroom, PTCF is usually the easier one to carry in your head. We break it down properly in how to write prompts for Google Gemini with the PTCF framework.
When it helps, and when it is overkill
You do not need five elements to ask what year something happened. Frameworks like this earn their keep when you want a specific artefact, for a specific audience, in a specific shape, which is precisely the situation where a lazy prompt costs you the most time in rewriting.
The most useful way to hold it is as a diagnostic rather than a template. When an answer comes back disappointing, run the five letters and you will almost always find you left one out. Nine times out of ten it is Recipients or Structure.
In short
What does the acronym PARTS stand for when writing prompts for Gemini?
Key takeaways
- PARTS = Persona, Aim, Recipients, Theme, Structure.
- A second version swaps Aim for Act and Recipients for Recipient. Both mean the action verb and the audience.
- If you are being assessed, answer with the wording your own course material uses.
- PARTS comes from Google educator training. Google's general guides use PTCF instead.
- Use it as a diagnostic: when an answer disappoints, you usually skipped Recipients or Structure.