Technique reference
Prompting techniques, explained simply
12 techniques that make AI answers clearer, more accurate and more useful. Each guide shows when to use it, how it works, and what good looks like.
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Skim the cards
Each summary tells you what the technique does in one or two sentences.
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Open one when you need it
Every guide has a definition, steps, and a weak vs strong example.
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Practice right away
Finish with the exercise and try it in the Playground while it's fresh.
Beginner
Start here. These work in almost every prompt you write.
- 01Beginner
Zero-shot prompting
Ask the AI to do a task directly, with clear instructions but no worked examples. The simplest technique and the right starting point.
Read the guide - 03Beginner
Role prompting
Ask the AI to respond as a specific role or expert to shape its focus, vocabulary, and tone for your audience.
Read the guide - 04Beginner
Contextual prompting
Give the AI the background it can't guess — who you are, your goal, your audience, your constraints — so answers fit your real situation.
Read the guide - 05Beginner
Instruction prompting
Write clear, explicit, positive instructions — action, scope, constraints, format — so the AI knows exactly what done looks like.
Read the guide
Intermediate
Add structure and reliability once the basics feel natural.
- 02Intermediate
Few-shot prompting
Show the AI a few examples of input and desired output so it copies your format, style, or decision rules.
Read the guide - 06Intermediate
Structured output prompting
Ask for answers in a precise format — tables, JSON, CSV, or fixed sections — so results are easy to scan, compare, or reuse.
Read the guide - 07Intermediate
Iterative prompting
Treat prompting as a conversation: review the output, give specific feedback, and refine until it's right.
Read the guide - 08Intermediate
Prompt chaining
Break a big task into smaller prompts where each step's output feeds the next, for better control and quality.
Read the guide - 12Intermediate
Multimodal prompting
Combine text with images, screenshots, PDFs, or audio in your prompt, and tell the AI exactly what to look for.
Read the guide
Advanced
For multi-step reasoning, complex workflows and tricky edge cases.
- 09Advanced
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
Ground AI answers in relevant source documents retrieved at question time, instead of relying only on what the model memorized.
Read the guide - 10Advanced
ReAct: Reason + Act
An agent pattern where the model alternates reasoning steps with tool actions and observations until it can answer.
Read the guide - 11Advanced
Self-consistency
Generate several independent reasoning paths for the same problem and keep the answer they most often agree on.
Read the guide