A business analyst prompts Copilot to turn weekly sales notes into action items, but results mix in old quarters because the data source is vague and dates shift. She needs consistent use of the current file and week. Which prompt technique best defines the data to be acted on and input variables?

Referencing the specific file path and declaring weekStart and weekEnd works because it grounds Copilot in both a known source and a precise time range. This helps prevent retrieval from drifting into old quarters and makes the prompt reusable: you can update the two variable values each week while keeping the source and instructions consistent. Stating the weekStart and weekEnd dates but letting Copilot locate the sales notes sets a temporal boundary, yet leaves source grounding unresolved; Copilot must infer which file is current, risking contamination from prior quarters. Referencing the sales file path but asking Copilot to infer the week grounds the source, yet leaves the date range to model inference, which is unreliable when dates shift. Mentioning the file name and week in prose provides context, but does not formalize reusable variables; natural-language details can be ambiguous and harder to update consistently, allowing week-over-week behavior to drift. An exam caveat is to distinguish defining the inputs from specifying what Copilot should produce or how it should reason: those instructions do not constrain the data source or date range. As a practical check, enable citations and confirm the cited file matches the intended path. Then roll the week forward by changing only weekStart and weekEnd, and verify that the action items contain no dates outside that range.