Prompt
A prompt is the input text given to a language model that instructs it what to generate — including questions, instructions, examples, and context.
Definition¶
A prompt is the text input provided to a language model that shapes what the model generates. Prompts can be as short as a single question ("What is burstiness?") or as long as detailed multi-section instructions with examples, constraints, and output format specifications.
Types of Prompts¶
User prompt — the message the end user sends. In a chat interface, this is what you type.
System prompt — instructions provided by the application developer that set the model's behavior, role, and constraints. Users don't usually see the system prompt. It defines things like "you are a writing assistant that helps improve tone and clarity" or imposes output format rules.
Few-shot prompt — a prompt that includes examples of the desired input-output pairs before the actual question. Showing the model two or three examples of the transformation you want (before → after) significantly improves output quality for specific tasks.
Chain-of-thought prompt — a prompt that asks the model to reason step-by-step ("think through this carefully before answering") rather than producing a direct answer. Improves accuracy on reasoning tasks.
Prompt Engineering¶
Prompt engineering is the practice of crafting prompts to produce better, more consistent, or more controllable model outputs. It's a skill that improves with practice and a significant factor in the quality of AI-generated content.
Key prompt engineering principles: - Be specific about the format you want (bullet list, paragraph, table) - Specify the audience ("explain this to a high school student") - Include examples when you want a specific style - Break complex tasks into steps
Prompts and AI Writing Tools¶
AI writing tools like AI Humanizer use carefully engineered system prompts that encode knowledge about what makes text sound natural versus machine-generated. The user just provides the input text; the system prompt handles the instructions.