Anatomy of a Good Prompt
Vague, Bossy, or Goldilocks?
Prompting Patterns
Evaluating Responses
Breaking the Model
100
It's the thing you want the AI to do for you (such as summarize, write, explain).
What is the task?
100
"Tell me about dogs."
What is vague?
100
"Act as an attorney" is an example of this prompting pattern.
What is role prompting?
100
A responsible user must do this with AI's responses.
What is fact-check (or check for accuracy)?
100
Trying to force contradictions, confuse the model, or push it into impossible or self-conflicting tasks is called this.
What is adversarial prompting?
200
It's the background information that an AI needs to do a good job.
What is context?
200
"Summarize in 4 bullet points how gardening can be therapeutic."
What is Goldilocks?
200
"Break the answer into short bullets and show your logic" is an example of this prompting pattern.
What is step-by-step prompting?
200
Even if a response uses a confident tone, it still might be this.
What is wrong?
200
"Create a hiaku with only 3 syllables" is an example of this.
What is contradiction (or conflicting constraints)?
300
Examples of this would be a maximum number of words, or a particular tone.
What is a constraint?
300
"Write exactly 439 words in iambic pentameter verse about hurricanes. Include at least 10 emojis."
What is bossy?
300
"1. Summarize this article; 2. identify bias; 3. rewrite in a neutral tone" is an example of this prompting pattern.
What is multi-step (or multi-stage) prompting?
300
If a response shows bias, it contains statements that are lacking this.
What is fairness (or balance).
300
Pushing the model into weird reasoning gaps can cause it to do this.
What is hallucinating?
400
It's the kind output (picture, essay, poem, bullet list) you expect from an AI.
What is the format?
400
"Write a poem."
What is vague?
400
"Limit your explanation to 300 words" is an example of this prompting pattern.
What is constraint prompting?
400
Asking the model to "fix your own mistakes before answering" uses this advanced strategy.
What is self-check prompting?
400
"Write the history of tomorrow" is this type of prompt.
What is an impossible task?
500
If an AI responds with something you didn't want or expect, your request was probably too _____.
What is vague (or ambiguous, or unclear)?
500
"Write a doctoral-level dissertation on Pokémon, in the style of a Taylor Swift song. Cite at least 213 sources."
What is bossy?
500
"Explain [subject] to [audience] using [format]. Limit to [length] and use [tone]" is an example of a prompting ______.
What is a prompting template?
500
Even with a good prompt, an AI's response can be incorrect if there were errors in this.
500
When conflicting tone instructions are given, this dramatic failure can result.
What is tone whiplash?