Prompt
The text instruction you send to an AI model asking it to do something.
A prompt is your input to an AI—the request, question, or instruction you type. "Write a haiku about cats" is a prompt. "Translate this to Spanish" is a prompt. Prompts range from simple one-liners to complex multi-step instructions with context and examples. The quality and clarity of your prompt has a huge impact on the quality of the response. Poorly worded prompts lead to off-topic or confused answers; well-crafted prompts (using techniques like chain-of-thought or few-shot learning) lead to better results.
Prompt engineering—the practice of crafting effective prompts—has become its own discipline in AI work. Simple rules like "be specific," "give examples," and "clarify what success looks like" dramatically improve AI outputs.
Example
Weak prompt: "Write about AI." Strong prompt: "Write a 200-word explanation of how large language models generate text, targeting someone with no machine-learning background."
Related terms
System Prompt
A special instruction given to an AI model that defines its behavior and personality for all subsequent user interactions.
Chain-of-Thought Prompting
A prompting technique that asks an AI to explain its reasoning step-by-step before giving a final answer.
Few-Shot Learning
Teaching a model to perform a task by providing a small number of examples (usually 2–10) in the prompt.