Cards Before Code: Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies and the Origins of Prompt Engineering

How Brian Eno anticipated the creative dynamics of AI by decades

Before prompt engineering had a name, Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt shipped a deck of cards that did the same job for artists. Oblique Strategies added friction, chance, and constraint to shake ideas loose. That logic maps cleanly to how creatives work with AI today. Different tools, same move: reframe the frame.

Before the prompt, there was the card

Oblique Strategies is a set of short, cryptic instructions meant to disrupt default choices. Think: "Use an unacceptable color," "Only one element of each kind," "Give way to your worst impulse," "Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics," "Accept advice."

They don't tell you what to do. They force interpretation. The card acts like a mirror: you project meaning, then act on it. That moment of translation is the creative engine.

During the Bowie sessions for Low, Eno pulled "Honor thy error as a hidden intention." A synth mistake became the spine of a track. Noise turned into signal because the frame changed.

The prompt as catalyst

LLMs don't take orders; they continue patterns. A prompt suggests direction and leaves space for surprise. The best prompts steer with intention while leaving room for play.

That's exactly what the cards do. They shift context, invite mutation, and bias you toward novelty without locking you in. Treat them like mental waypoints in a probabilistic space.

Parallels you can use today

• "Use an unacceptable color" → "Write a product description using outrageously exaggerated language."
• "Give way to your worst impulse" → "Describe a utopian city from the view of its most corrupt official."
• "Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics" → "Rewrite this abstract mission in clear sixth-grade language."
• "Only one element of each kind" → "Write a landing page using only one example, one benefit, and one CTA."
• "Accept advice" → "Critique this concept as a skeptical creative director, then propose one bolder option."

Eno as early prompt engineer

Eno didn't just make music. He designed conditions where good outcomes emerge. His process for ambient work used tape loops of slightly different lengths phasing against each other, creating textures that never repeat.

Two dynamics did the heavy lifting: controlled randomness and compounding variation. That's close to how text generation works: seed an initial state, then let each step nudge the next. You curate trajectories instead of forcing a single path.

Prompting as ritual

Good prompts aren't about maximal clarity. They use constraint, tension, and perspective shifts to break inertia. The deck is finite but the interpretations are not, because your context does the rest.

This is why both cards and AI chats can feel oddly personal. The input is ritualized; the output feels revealed. The point isn't to control-it's to transform the question you're asking.

From card decks to code

• Pre-digital: Rituals that induce altered states for recombining symbols
• Analog: Oblique Strategies inject randomness into structured work
• Digital: Prompt techniques guide probabilistic systems to novel outcomes

A practical prompt kit for creatives

• Flip the axis: "List five bad ideas for this campaign, then invert each into a good one."
• Introduce a constraint: "Write the script in 90 words, no adjectives, one metaphor."
• Honor the error: "Use this flawed draft. Keep one 'mistake' as a feature and iterate."
• Swap perspective: "Pitch this brand from the viewpoint of a loyal critic."
• Translate the abstract: "Turn this vision into a storyboard with six frames and captions."
• Add noise on purpose: "Give me three weird variations that break brand voice, then refine the best one back on-brand."
• Constraint ladder: "Generate 10 options → shortlist 3 → merge 2 into a hybrid."

Oblique-to-AI prompt translations you can copy

• "Use an unacceptable color" → "Write with clashing imagery that feels 'wrong' but vivid."
• "Only one element of each kind" → "Create a homepage with one headline, one proof point, one CTA."
• "Give way to your worst impulse" → "Draft a tagline that's too honest, then dial it back by 20%."
• "Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics" → "Replace every vague phrase with a measurable claim."
• "Accept advice" → "Audit this concept like an award judge and propose one bolder variant."
• "Honor thy error as a hidden intention" → "Spot the accidental theme in this draft and rebuild around it."
• "Change nothing and continue with immaculate consistency" → "Write five lines that repeat the same cadence and structure."

Further exploration

• Oblique Strategies for background on the deck and its history.
• Prompt engineering resources for building a repeatable practice.

Conclusion

Prompts are not commands. They're intentional disruptions that help you see differently and ship sooner. Eno's cards proved the point decades ago: set the right conditions and let emergence do its work.

Write better prompts, get better outcomes. A prompt is a choice and a risk-use it to move your project, your team, and your taste forward.