Definition
Prompt Engineering
The practice of designing and optimizing the instructions given to a language model to achieve desired outputs, including system prompts, few-shot examples, and formatting guidelines.
In Depth
Prompt engineering is foundational to building effective AI agents. The system prompt defines the agent's identity, capabilities, constraints, and behavior patterns. Good prompt engineering includes clear role definitions, explicit tool usage instructions, output format specifications, and edge case handling. In agent systems, prompt engineering extends to designing the prompts that govern planning, tool selection, error recovery, and interaction with other agents.
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