Level 3 · Advanced
Advanced Prompt Engineering
Treat prompts as designed systems. Learn how to break problems apart, connect prompts into workflows, write durable system instructions, and measure whether a prompt is actually getting better — with an honest view of what reasoning techniques can and can't do.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Lessons
- 8 lessons
- Estimated time
- 1 h 42 min
What you'll learn
- Apply step-by-step reasoning prompts appropriately and honestly
- Structure long prompts with sections, delimiters and templates
- Write effective system instructions
- Decompose complex tasks into chains and multi-step workflows
- Evaluate and optimise prompts with test cases and rubrics
Course content
2 chapters · 8 lessons
01Designing prompts
- 1Not startedChain-of-thought conceptsWhen step-by-step prompting helps, what visible reasoning really is (and isn't), and how to ask for intermediate work you can actually check.12 min
- 2Not startedStructured promptingUse sections, delimiters, XML-style tags and templates so the model can tell instructions from data — and so your prompts are easy to maintain.12 min
- 3Not startedSystem instructionsHow system and user messages differ, what belongs in each, how instructions persist across a conversation — and why they aren't a security boundary.13 min
- 4Not startedPrompt decompositionBreak big, tangled requests into smaller sub-tasks the model can do well — and learn how to spot when a prompt is trying to do too much.11 min
02Building workflows
- 5Not startedMulti-step workflowsDesign repeatable workflows that combine AI steps, code and human checkpoints — with clear hand-offs, validation and failure handling.13 min
- 6Not startedPrompt evaluation and optimizationStop guessing whether a prompt is better. Build a small test set and rubric, compare versions fairly, and change one thing at a time.14 min
- 7Not startedPrompt chainingConnect prompts so each one's output becomes the next one's input — with focused steps, clean hand-offs and checks between links.12 min
- 8Not startedAdvanced reasoning strategiesSelf-consistency, verification passes, considering alternatives and plan-then-execute: what each does, when it helps, and what it costs.15 min