Understanding Prompt Engineering Basics

Think of LLMs as skilled chefs capable of making amazing dishes with many ingredients. However, just like chefs need a clear recipe to make a dish, language models need well-crafted prompts to produce the desired output.

Prompt engineering is the art of writing a prompt, choosing the right words to guide the model’s response, and adjusting them until you get exactly what you want.

Let's explore prompt engineering in more detail and discover different ways to write an effective prompt.

What is prompt engineering?

A prompt is the instructions given to an LLM to harness its full potential and generate a response. Prompt engineering takes it a step further by carefully crafting and refining these prompts to guide the LLM towards producing the exact output we need.

Writing prompts with clear objectives, goals, and requirements helps the model understand what users want, leading to more relevant and accurate responses. We can transform a simple query into a well-crafted prompt that guides the AI model to understand and generate better responses using various elements of prompts. Think of elements as building blocks that are combined to form an effective prompt.

Disclaimer: In this module, we aim to be respectful and inclusive of all gender identities. We've tried to use gender-neutral language and avoid content that excludes or discriminates against anyone. However, in certain scenarios, like when explaining writing prompts and related concepts, we use male and female gender pronouns (he/she). This decision is made for clarity and practical illustration purposes only. Please understand that using specific gender pronouns in this context is not intended to exclude or marginalize any individual or group.

Elements of prompts

The fundamental elements of prompts are listed below:

• Instruction

• Context

• Constraints

• Format ...