Prompt

What is a Prompt?

A prompt is the text you provide to an AI model to tell it what you want. It can be a question, an instruction, a few examples, or even a long document followed by a task. The quality of the prompt directly influences the quality of the model's output.

Think of a prompt like a brief you give to a skilled freelancer. A vague brief ("write something about dogs") yields a generic result. A specific brief ("write a 200-word blog introduction about why golden retrievers make great family pets, in a warm conversational tone") produces something much closer to what you actually need.

How Does Prompt Engineering Work?

Prompt engineering is the practice of carefully designing prompts to get the best possible results. Common techniques include:

• Zero-shot prompting -- asking the model directly without any examples.
• Few-shot prompting -- providing a handful of input-output examples so the model understands the desired format.
• Chain-of-thought -- asking the model to reason step by step before giving a final answer.
• System prompts -- setting the model's role or behavior rules at the start of a conversation.

Why Does It Matter?

Because LLMs are so sensitive to how a question is phrased, mastering prompt engineering can mean the difference between a mediocre response and an expert-level one -- all without changing the model itself.