Prompt Engineering

Core Principles

1. Clarity Over Cleverness

A clear, direct prompt always outperforms a clever but ambiguous one. State exactly what you want, in what format, and with what constraints. Ambiguity is the enemy of consistent output.

2. Context is Everything

Models have no inherent context beyond their training data. Every prompt must establish:

• Who the model should be (role)
• What the task is (instruction)
• How to respond (format, tone, length)
• Why the task matters (optional but helpful for complex tasks)

3. Iterate, Don't Expect Perfection First Time

The first prompt is rarely the best. Prompt engineering is an iterative discipline. Each refinement teaches you something about how the model interprets your instructions.

4. Constrain to Liberate

Paradoxically, more constraints (format, length constraints, guardrails) lead to better outputs. Open-ended prompts invite hallucination and inconsistency.