Prompt Engineering
The skill of writing instructions that get good results from AI.
In everyday terms
Giving context, saying who the audience is, showing an example of what you want, and asking it to think step by step.
For professionals
Designing inputs (role, constraints, few-shot examples, output format, decomposition) to steer model behaviour reliably, often evaluated systematically.
Think of it like…
Writing a great brief for a freelancer: the better the brief, the better the work.
You've already seen it
Prompt libraries, "act as an expert…" templates, job titles like "prompt engineer".
Myth vs reality
Myth: Prompt engineering is just tricks and hacks.
Reality: Mostly it's clear communication: context, examples, and a defined output.
Quick check
Showing the AI two examples of the output you want is called…
- Fine-tuning
- Few-shot prompting
- Training
- Overfitting
Show answer
Few-shot prompting: Examples inside the prompt = few-shot.