Prompt engineering

Prompt engineering is the work of writing and refining the instructions given to a language model so that it produces the output you need reliably, not just once in a demo. In production this usually means a carefully structured template with the task, the constraints, the output format and a few worked examples.

The label oversells the glamour and undersells the discipline. Serious prompt work looks like testing: a set of representative inputs, an expected outcome for each, and a record of how a change to the wording moved the pass rate. Without that, a prompt is edited on vibes and quietly gets worse.

Prompts are also a maintenance surface. They belong in version control alongside the code, they change behaviour when a model is upgraded, and they should be reviewed like any other logic that decides what a customer sees.