Last updated: April 5, 2026 · Prompting & Usage · by Daniel Ashford
What is Prompt?
The text input you send to an LLM to get a response.
Definition
A prompt is the text input provided to a language model to elicit a response. Prompts can range from simple questions to complex multi-part instructions with examples, constraints, and formatting requirements. The quality of the prompt significantly influences the quality of the output.
How It Works
Prompts typically consist of a system prompt (persistent behavior instructions), user messages (the actual task), and optionally few-shot examples (demonstrations of desired output). Effective prompting is both an art and a science — techniques like chain-of-thought prompting, role-playing, and structured output formatting can dramatically improve results.
Example
Simple prompt: "What is the capital of France?" Complex prompt: "You are a financial analyst. Analyze the following earnings report, focusing on revenue growth, margin trends, and forward guidance. Present in bullet points with specific numbers."
Related Terms
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