What is prompt engineering?

Prompt engineering is the practice of designing and refining prompts to effectively communicate with and guide AI models, particularly large language models (LLMs), to produce desired outputs.

It involves:

1. Crafting clear and specific instructions for AI models
2. Utilizing techniques like role assignment, few-shot prompting, and chain-of-thought reasoning
3. Optimizing prompts for different applications such as text generation, summarization, and problem-solving
4. Understanding the capabilities and limitations of AI models
5. Iteratively refining prompts to improve output quality and reliability
6. Applying advanced techniques such as self-consistency, generated knowledge, and least-to-most prompting
7. Considering ethical implications and potential biases in prompt design

By using Langfuse Prompt Management, you can version and manage your prompts collaboratively to execute the steps above and keep track of their performance in production.

Recommended readings

• Learn Prompting Documentation
• The Prompt Report
• Prompting Fundamentals and How to Apply them Effectively