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Prompt Engineering
25 Terms
A–Z Linked
Prompt Engineering
Techniques for designing effective prompts that guide AI systems toward useful responses.
Select a term below or scroll through the full category.
- Audience Prompting
- CLEAR Framework
- Constraint Prompting
- Context Prompting
- Delimiters
- Evaluation Prompt
- Goal-Oriented Prompt
- Instruction Prompt
- Iterative Prompting
- Output Format
- Persona Prompting
- Prompt
- Prompt Chaining
- Prompt Debugging
- Prompt Engineering
- Prompt Library
- Prompt Refinement
- Prompt Variables
- Prompt Versioning
- Self-Consistency Prompting
- Step-by-Step Prompting
- Template
- Tone Prompting
- User Prompt
- Workflow Prompting
Audience Prompting
📘 Definition
Specifying the intended audience so the AI can adjust vocabulary, depth, and style.
🪄 Simple Explanation
Tell the AI who the content is for.
🔑 Why It Matters
Audience awareness improves communication.
💡 Example
'Explain photosynthesis to Year 5 students.'
See Also
CLEAR Framework
📘 Definition
A structured approach to writing effective prompts by making instructions clear, logical, explicit, adaptive, and refined.
🪄 Simple Explanation
The CLEAR Framework helps users write better prompts.
🔑 Why It Matters
It improves response quality and consistency.
💡 Example
A business analyst rewrites a vague prompt using the CLEAR Framework.
Constraint Prompting
📘 Definition
Adding rules or limits that the AI must follow when generating a response.
🪄 Simple Explanation
Constraints guide AI behaviour.
🔑 Why It Matters
Limits often improve precision.
💡 Example
'Use no more than 150 words and avoid technical jargon.'
See Also
Context Prompting
📘 Definition
Providing background information so the AI better understands the task before answering.
🪄 Simple Explanation
Context helps AI generate more relevant responses.
🔑 Why It Matters
Additional information often improves accuracy.
💡 Example
Explaining that the audience is kindergarten students before requesting a lesson plan.
See Also
Delimiters
📘 Definition
Special markers such as quotation marks or triple backticks that separate instructions from source material.
🪄 Simple Explanation
Delimiters help AI distinguish different parts of a prompt.
🔑 Why It Matters
They reduce misunderstanding.
💡 Example
Placing reference text inside triple backticks.
See Also
Evaluation Prompt
📘 Definition
A prompt asking the AI to critique, assess, or score content against defined criteria.
🪄 Simple Explanation
Evaluation prompts support quality improvement.
🔑 Why It Matters
They help identify strengths and weaknesses.
💡 Example
Ask AI to evaluate an essay using a marking rubric.
See Also
Goal-Oriented Prompt
📘 Definition
A prompt that clearly states the desired outcome before providing instructions.
🪄 Simple Explanation
It begins with the final objective.
🔑 Why It Matters
Clear goals improve AI responses.
💡 Example
'Create a revision guide for undergraduate statistics.'
See Also
Instruction Prompt
📘 Definition
A prompt that explicitly tells the AI what task to perform and how to present the output.
🪄 Simple Explanation
Instruction prompts give direct guidance.
🔑 Why It Matters
Specific instructions reduce ambiguity.
💡 Example
'Create five multiple-choice questions with answers.'
See Also
Iterative Prompting
📘 Definition
Improving results by repeatedly refining prompts based on previous outputs.
🪄 Simple Explanation
AI conversations often improve through iteration.
🔑 Why It Matters
Iteration encourages collaboration between user and AI.
💡 Example
A researcher gradually improves a literature review prompt.
See Also
Output Format
📘 Definition
Instructions that specify how the AI should structure its response.
🪄 Simple Explanation
Output formatting makes responses easier to use.
🔑 Why It Matters
Well-structured outputs save editing time.
💡 Example
Requesting results in a markdown table.
See Also
Persona Prompting
📘 Definition
Assigning a particular identity or expertise to the AI before requesting a task.
🪄 Simple Explanation
Persona prompting changes the perspective of the response.
🔑 Why It Matters
It improves consistency and relevance.
💡 Example
'Act as an experienced HR manager.'
See Also
Prompt
📘 Definition
A prompt is the instruction, question, or input given to an AI model to guide its response.
🪄 Simple Explanation
A prompt tells the AI what to do.
🔑 Why It Matters
The quality of the prompt strongly affects the quality of the answer.
💡 Example
'Summarise this report in 200 words' is a prompt.
See Also
Prompt Chaining
📘 Definition
A technique in which the output from one prompt becomes the input for the next prompt.
🪄 Simple Explanation
Complex tasks are broken into smaller prompts.
🔑 Why It Matters
Prompt chaining improves workflow reliability.
💡 Example
One prompt creates an outline and the next expands each section.
See Also
Prompt Debugging
📘 Definition
The process of identifying why a prompt produces poor results and revising it.
🪄 Simple Explanation
Debugging improves prompt quality.
🔑 Why It Matters
It reduces ambiguity and errors.
💡 Example
Removing vague wording improves AI output.
See Also
- Prompt Refinement
- Iteration
- Prompt
Prompt Engineering
📘 Definition
Prompt engineering is the practice of designing clear and effective instructions for AI systems so that they produce accurate, relevant, and useful responses.
🪄 Simple Explanation
It means learning how to ask AI better questions and give better instructions.
🔑 Why It Matters
The quality of an AI’s response depends greatly on the quality of the prompt. Learning prompt engineering helps users obtain more accurate, relevant, and reliable results from AI systems.
💡 Example
Instead of asking “Explain marketing,” a better prompt might be “Explain digital marketing to a first-year business student using three simple examples.”
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Prompt Library
📘 Definition
A curated collection of reusable prompts organised by task or domain.
🪄 Simple Explanation
Prompt libraries help teams reuse effective prompts.
🔑 Why It Matters
They improve efficiency and standardisation.
💡 Example
A company stores tested prompts for marketing, HR, and finance.
See Also
Prompt Refinement
📘 Definition
The iterative process of improving a prompt to obtain better AI responses.
🪄 Simple Explanation
Prompt refinement improves quality through revision.
🔑 Why It Matters
Small wording changes can significantly affect results.
💡 Example
Adding examples after the first AI response improves the second.
See Also
- Prompt Engineering
- CLEAR Framework
- Iteration
Prompt Variables
📘 Definition
Reusable placeholders within prompt templates that can be replaced with different values.
🪄 Simple Explanation
Variables make prompts reusable.
🔑 Why It Matters
They simplify automation.
💡 Example
{{topic}} is replaced with Mathematics or Biology.
See Also
Prompt Versioning
📘 Definition
Managing different versions of prompts so improvements can be tracked over time.
🪄 Simple Explanation
Versioning supports continuous improvement.
🔑 Why It Matters
Teams can compare prompt performance.
💡 Example
Version 3 of a prompt produces better summaries than Version 1.
See Also
Self-Consistency Prompting
📘 Definition
A reasoning technique that encourages multiple solution paths before selecting the best answer.
🪄 Simple Explanation
Multiple reasoning paths can improve reliability.
🔑 Why It Matters
Useful for complex reasoning tasks.
💡 Example
The AI compares several possible solutions before answering.
See Also
Step-by-Step Prompting
📘 Definition
A prompting technique that asks the AI to complete a task in a sequence of clearly defined steps.
🪄 Simple Explanation
The AI follows one step at a time.
🔑 Why It Matters
Breaking tasks into steps improves reliability.
💡 Example
Ask the AI to first analyse a case, then recommend solutions.
Template
📘 Definition
A reusable prompt structure containing fixed instructions and variable placeholders.
🪄 Simple Explanation
Templates improve consistency.
🔑 Why It Matters
Reusable prompts save time.
💡 Example
A lesson-plan template is reused with different topics.
Tone Prompting
📘 Definition
Directing the AI to write in a particular tone, style, or voice.
🪄 Simple Explanation
Tone instructions influence how the response sounds.
🔑 Why It Matters
They improve consistency.
💡 Example
'Write in a formal academic tone.'
See Also
User Prompt
📘 Definition
The message or instruction entered by the user during an AI interaction.
🪄 Simple Explanation
A user prompt is the request you type.
🔑 Why It Matters
Clear prompts usually produce better responses.
💡 Example
'Explain inflation using simple examples' is a user prompt.
See Also
Workflow Prompting
📘 Definition
Designing prompts that support multi-stage business or learning workflows.
🪄 Simple Explanation
Workflow prompting connects several AI tasks together.
🔑 Why It Matters
It enables complex automation.
💡 Example
One workflow drafts, edits, and summarises a report.