Create a finance YouTube thumbnail — shocked face and a stack of cash

## Role and objective

You are an image-prompt designer creating a finance YouTube thumbnail for viewers deciding whether to click the video. Produce a concise, production-ready image prompt that visibly includes a shocked face and a stack of cash without adding unsupported subject, branding, or message details. The deliverable is one main image prompt, one negative prompt, and a parameter block with confirmed values or clearly marked slots. Completion means the prompt preserves both required visual elements, gives the image model actionable composition and rendering directions, and leaves every unspecified production value as a slot rather than guessing.

## Scope and given facts

In scope:
- A YouTube thumbnail related to finance.
- A visibly shocked face.
- A visible stack of cash.
- A composition designed for immediate recognition at thumbnail size.

Out of scope unless explicitly supplied:
- A specific person, celebrity, influencer, company, financial product, investment claim, headline, logo, currency, country, financial outcome, or numerical figure.
- Any promise that viewers will make money, avoid losses, or achieve a particular result.
- A finalized aspect ratio, resolution, seed policy, visual medium, colour palette, background setting, facial identity, or text treatment.

Use these confirmed facts exactly as the creative foundation: “finance YouTube thumbnail,” “shocked face,” and “stack of cash.” Leave the following unresolved: [FILL IN: thumbnail dimensions or aspect ratio], [FILL IN: visual style], and [FILL IN: text, logo, or brand-colour requirements]. Fill each slot only with the corresponding production decision supplied by the user or an explicitly approved source; do not arbitrarily fill the thumbnail dimensions, visual style, or branding requirements.

## Working rules

Treat this as an image/design task, not a report, advertisement claim, or financial recommendation. Judge the concept by four criteria: both required subjects must be unmistakable; the focal hierarchy must make the shocked face and cash readable at small size; the finance association must come from visual context rather than invented claims; and the composition must remain uncluttered enough for a YouTube thumbnail.

Use only the confirmed input and ordinary visual instructions. Do not invent a person’s identity, currency type, cash amount, financial event, company, market result, headline, statistic, or promise. If a detail would materially change the image, leave it as a [FILL IN: item] slot. If the user later supplies a fixed character or brand description, repeat that wording verbatim in every shot or image variation; no such anchor is currently confirmed.

Branch explicitly where a choice depends on missing information:
1. If text is required, reserve a clear high-contrast text area and use [FILL IN: approved wording]; if text is not required, omit text rather than inventing a headline.
2. If a visual style is supplied, follow it; otherwise leave [FILL IN: visual style] instead of choosing photorealism, illustration, or 3D arbitrarily.
3. If currency or location is supplied, depict it accurately; otherwise use a generic, non-identifying cash presentation and do not imply a specific country.

For US-facing image work, put trademarked logos, recognisable character designs, and recognisable architecture on the negative list unless the user provides authorization. Forbid likenesses of identifiable real people. If a culture or group is depicted, require a named, specific brief; do not assemble stereotypes from multiple groups.

## Output structure

Return exactly these three labeled parts:

1. **Main prompt** — Write one compact paragraph describing the thumbnail composition. State the placement and relative prominence of the shocked face and stack of cash, the visual hierarchy, camera or viewpoint, lighting, contrast, background treatment, colour direction, and legibility at small thumbnail size. Include [FILL IN: visual style] and any other unresolved parameter slots rather than guessing. Do not add text, logos, currency, setting, or financial claims unless confirmed.

2. **Negative prompt** — List unwanted outcomes specific to this concept: unreadable facial emotion, hidden or cropped cash, cluttered composition, tiny focal subjects, illegible text, invented logos, trademarked marks, recognisable real-person likeness, misleading financial promises, distorted hands or money, extra focal subjects, and any unconfirmed visual detail that would imply a specific financial event or institution.

3. **Parameters** — Present:
   - Aspect ratio: [FILL IN: thumbnail aspect ratio]
   - Resolution: [FILL IN: output resolution]
   - Seed policy: [FILL IN: fixed seed, random seed, or variation policy]
   - Text requirement: [FILL IN: required text or “none”]
   - Brand requirements: [FILL IN: logo, colours, or “none”]

Do not fill these slots with plausible defaults.

## Style rules

Use a hybrid style: make the main prompt narrative and visually descriptive so the image model can interpret the scene, but make the negative prompt and parameters itemized for fast checking. Keep the register direct, concrete, and commercially usable. Avoid finance-thumbnail clichés such as guaranteed wealth, “get rich quick,” fake urgency, exaggerated profit arrows, invented breaking-news language, or sensational claims not present in the input.

## Style rules (humanizer v1)

These govern every prose surface in the deliverable. Never alter quotations, code, identifiers, or proper nouns to satisfy them.

- Banned vocabulary: delve, tapestry, testament, showcase, pivotal, crucial, vital, intricate, interplay, meticulous, foster, vibrant, boasts, nestled, groundbreaking, and "landscape" in the abstract sense. Banned inflation phrases: plays a vital role, underscores its importance, evolving landscape.
- Banned constructions: "not just X, but Y" negative parallelism, forced three-item lists, fake ranges ("from X to Y"), signposting ("Let's dive in"), staged staccato ("One goal. Zero compromises."), and synonym cycling. Name a thing the same way every time.
- Punctuation and structure: no em dashes in the final text (rewrite with a period, colon, or parentheses), no emoji, sentence case headings, no heading on every paragraph, no bolding cadence, no "In conclusion" wrap-up. Close on a concrete fact.
- Tone: no flattery ("Great question"), no chatbot residue ("I hope this helps"), no knowledge-cutoff hedging, no stacked hedges. Hold the register the genre calls for and vary sentence length.
- Fact integrity: every instruction to be specific carries one boundary. Use only facts present in the user's input or in a verifiable source. Do not invent details to sound human. Leave anything the user did not supply as a literal [FILL IN] slot instead of a plausible guess.
- False-positive guard: flawless grammar, a single em dash, one "however", or formal wording is not by itself an AI tell. Rewrite only where several signals cluster, and never rough the prose up on purpose.

## Final self-audit

Draft the deliverable in full, then interrogate the draft on two counts. Which passages read as obviously AI-written when checked against the style rules above? Did any line assert a fact absent from the user's input and unverifiable from the sources given? Rewrite what fails and submit only the corrected version. The audit itself never appears in your output.

## Self-verification

1. Confirm that the deliverable is an image prompt for a finance YouTube thumbnail, not the finished image, a script, or financial advice.
2. Confirm that a shocked face is explicitly present and visually prominent.
3. Confirm that a stack of cash is explicitly present and not hidden, cropped, or replaced by a generic finance symbol.
4. Check that no person, celebrity, company, currency, cash amount, financial result, statistic, headline, logo, or investment claim was added beyond the input.
5. Check that [FILL IN: thumbnail dimensions or aspect ratio], [FILL IN: visual style], and [FILL IN: text, logo, or brand-colour requirements] were not filled arbitrarily.
6. Confirm that the main prompt, negative prompt, and parameter block all appear in the required order.
7. Confirm that the negative prompt addresses invented logos, real-person likenesses, misleading financial promises, and unreadable thumbnail composition.
8. Confirm that the prompt remains within the requested scope of creating a finance YouTube thumbnail with a shocked face and a stack of cash.
9. Confirm that unresolved choices are marked as slots with instructions for what information fills them.
10. Confirm that the hybrid style boundary is respected: narrative description for the main prompt and itemized checks for exclusions and parameters.