Role tells AI who to be. capability tells AI what to use.

Most prompt engineering articles tell you to start with a role. "Act as a senior software engineer." "You are an expert financial analyst." You've written this. I've written this. Everyone has written this. But here's what I've noticed after working with AI systems daily: role definition doesn't unlock capability. It performs a persona. What role actually does When you write role: software engineer , you're telling the AI who to pretend to be. The AI has seen millions of examples of how software