Specifying a Summary Length
Explore how to effectively specify summary length in prompts to control AI-generated text size. Learn why setting length in the prompt is better than trimming after generation and practice writing prompts with concrete length constraints to fit UI spaces precisely, ensuring coherent and usable summaries.
Interfaces have fixed space. A card holds two lines, a badge holds a word, a tooltip holds a phrase. An answer that ignores those limits either overflows or gets cut. Both are decided before the request is sent.
We'll cover the following:
Why length is a prompt problem
Ways to specify length
What happens without a limit
Practice
Why length is a prompt problem
Length can be handled in one of two places: in the prompt, or in the interface after the answer arrives.
Handling it in the interface means cutting text that has already been produced. The answer gets shortened by removing its end, which is where a summary usually puts its conclusion. A sentence stops mid-clause. ...