Prompt Engineering Methodology

What Is Prompt Engineering

Prompt Engineering is the practice of designing input text to guide LLMs toward desired outputs. As model capabilities grow, prompting techniques continue to evolve.

Core Techniques

Zero-Shot. Ask directly without examples. Works for simple tasks.

Few-Shot. Include 2-5 examples in the prompt. GPT-3 first demonstrated this capability.

Chain-of-Thought (CoT). Add “Let’s think step by step” to guide stepwise reasoning.

Structured Output. Request JSON, Markdown tables, or other formatted responses for programmatic consumption.

These techniques became mainstream during the GPT-3 era described in GPT Series Evolution.