Prompt Engineering in Plain English

Prompt engineering is the practice of crafting inputs that guide large language models to produce consistent, useful outputs.

Role Prompt: "You are a senior backend engineer. Review this API design for pitfalls."

Chain of Thought: "List the steps you will follow before answering. Then produce the answer."

Format Guard: "Return JSON with keys: summary, risks, next_steps."

Context Booster: "Use the following context to answer and cite it: ..."

Counterfactual Check: "Explain why your answer could be wrong and what to verify."

Add examples, specify tone and format, and keep outputs grounded in supplied context to reduce hallucinations.

Prompt engineering is the practice of crafting inputs that guide large language models to produce consistent, useful outputs.

Role Prompt: "You are a senior backend engineer. Review this API design for pitfalls."

Chain of Thought: "List the steps you will follow before answering. Then produce the answer."

Format Guard: "Return JSON with keys: summary, risks, next_steps."

Context Booster: "Use the following context to answer and cite it: ..."

Counterfactual Check: "Explain why your answer could be wrong and what to verify."

Add examples, specify tone and format, and keep outputs grounded in supplied context to reduce hallucinations.

What Is Prompt Engineering? Top 5 Prompts to Get You Started