Prompt Design Fundamentals

Core principles of prompting — role assignment, clarity, specificity, and the anatomy of a great prompt

Prompt Design Fundamentals

What Is It?

Prompt engineering is the craft of designing inputs to language models that reliably produce the outputs you want.

A well-designed prompt is worth a thousand fine-tuning runs.

The Four Elements

**Role:** Who the AI should be ("You are a senior software engineer...")

**Task:** What you want done ("Review this code for bugs...")

**Context:** Background information ("Production code handling auth...")

**Format:** Output structure ("Return as JSON with keys: issues, severity...")

The Prompt Template

[Role] You are a helpful assistant with expertise in [domain].
[Task] Your task is to [specific action].
[Context] Here is the context: [relevant information]
[Format] Please format your response as: [output structure]
[Constraints] Do NOT: [things to avoid]

Common Mistakes

Wrong	Why	Right
"Tell me everything about..."	Too broad	Be specific
"Fix this code"	Vague	"Fix security vulnerabilities"
No format instructions	Random output	Specify structure
Contradictory instructions	Model confused	Check consistency

Your Turn!

Improve this vague prompt: "Explain machine learning."

Rewrite using the four elements: Role, Task, Context, Format.

✏️ Code Editor

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📤 Output

Write your solution and click "Run Code" to test it!

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