Core Concepts
Prompt Engineering
Also known as: prompt design
In one line
The craft of writing prompts that get accurate, useful answers from AI.
What does Prompt Engineering mean?
Prompt engineering combines clear instructions, role assignment, examples (few-shot), step-by-step reasoning (chain-of-thought), and output formatting to consistently steer LLM behaviour.
A real-world example
Adding "think step by step" and "return valid JSON only" to a prompt to improve reliability.
Related terms
Prompt
The instruction you give an AI to tell it what to do.
System Prompt
A hidden instruction that sets the AI's role, rules, and personality for the whole conversation.
Few-shot Prompting
Giving the AI a handful of examples in the prompt so it copies the pattern.
Chain-of-Thought (CoT)
Asking the AI to reason step-by-step before giving its final answer.