Glossary
Prompt engineering
Designing inputs and instructions to steer model behavior.
What it is
Prompt engineering is the practice of structuring instructions, examples, and context to get reliable outputs. In production it extends to templating, system prompts, and guarding against prompt injection.
Why it matters in production
The prompt is your cheapest control surface — before fine-tuning, before more retrieval. In production it becomes engineering: versioned templates, explicit output contracts, and treating all untrusted text as data, not instructions.
In practice
A system prompt that says 'Answer only from the provided context. If the context doesn't contain the answer, say you don't know' — plus a template slot for retrieved chunks.
Related terms
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