A prompt in artificial intelligence is an instruction, question, or set of data given to a model (such as ChatGPT) to generate a response. It is, in essence, the initial message that guides the model’s behavior.

In language models, a prompt can be as simple as a question (“What is photosynthesis?”) or more complex, such as a detailed task (“Write a 3-paragraph summary of the French Revolution, in a formal tone”).

The quality of the output depends greatly on how the prompt is written. Therefore, in the field of generative AI, learning to design effective prompts has become a key skill, known as prompt engineering.

Let’s look at a couple of examples of prompts. Bad ones, and improved ones.

---

🔹 Example 1: Writing a Text

• Bad Prompt:
  
  “I wrote about water.”
  (Too broad, lacking context or purpose.)
  
• Improved Prompt:
  
  “I wrote a short, clear text aimed at elementary school children, explaining why water is important for life.”
  (Specific in tone, audience, and purpose.)

---

🔹 Example 2: Help with Code

• Bad Prompt:
  
  “Help me with Python.”
  (Does not indicate the problem, skill level, or what is expected.)
  
• Improved Prompt:
  
  “I’m learning Python and need a simple example that shows how to read a text file line by line and count how many lines it contains.”
  (Clarifies the level, task, and what is expected of the student) result.)

---

Advice for you

When writing a prompt, think about it for a moment, and then “tell” the following to the AI, replacing the text in parentheses with your desired goals:

# Context: {
You are an expert in prompting engineering.
}
# Instructions: {
Write a prompt to accomplish the stated objective.
}
# Objective: [Write the objectives you want to achieve with the prompt you need here.]

---

Veámoslo con un ejemplo aplicado en ChatGPT:

We enter the ChatGPT chat…

# Context: {
You are an expert in prompting engineering.
}
# Instructions: {
Write a prompt to accomplish the stated objective.
}
# Objective: [I need to be able to explain to a 10-year-old how metamorphosis works.]

ChatGPT answers us…

You are a science teacher with extensive experience teaching children. Explain in simple terms and with visual examples how metamorphosis works in animals, especially butterflies and frogs. The text should be clear, user-friendly, and understandable for a 10-year-old. Use comparisons with everyday things if it helps further understanding.

Include:
- A short definition of metamorphosis.
- The main stages.
- An example of a butterfly and another of a frog.
- A closing summary that summarizes what you've learned in a fun way.

This prompt you are using to create this new prompt is what we call a meta-prompt (we will talk more about this in the blog).

Running the new ChatGPT-enhanced prompt (you could edit it further if you wish), we would get something like this:

---

If you’re interested, we’ll continue learning here on the blog, or on my GitHub.