AI glossary
Prompt
The input you give an AI model — a question, instruction, examples or documents — that it responds to.
A prompt can be one line (“Summarise this email”) or several pages with context, examples and a required format. The model has no other knowledge of your situation, so what you put in the prompt largely decides the quality of what you get back.
Good prompts say what you want, why, for whom and in what format, and include the material the model needs.
Example: Weak prompt: “Summarise this”. Good prompt: “Summarise this report in five bullet points for the board, highlighting risks and dates, in no more than 120 words”.
In practice
- Say who it is for and what it will be used for.
- Include the material it needs instead of assuming the model knows it.
- Set the format: list, table, length.
Seven techniques with examples: prompting techniques.
