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Prompt

Instructions you give to AI to guide its behavior.

Definition​

A prompt is any text you provide to an AI model to tell it what to do. It can be as simple as a question ("What is the capital of France?") or as complex as a multi-page specification with examples, constraints, and formatting requirements.

Key Points​

  • Everything is a prompt. When you type a message to ChatGPT, that's a prompt. When you write an AGENTS.md file, that's also a prompt — just a more structured one.

  • Prompts can be reusable. Instead of typing the same instructions every time, you can save them in a file and reference them later.

  • Good prompts are specific. Vague instructions produce vague results. The more precisely you describe what you want, the better the output.

Examples​

Simple prompt:

Summarize this article in 3 bullet points.

Detailed prompt:

You are a proofreader for academic writing.

When checking a document:
1. Fix grammar and spelling errors
2. Preserve the author's voice
3. Don't change technical terminology
4. Present all changes in a table before applying
  • Agent — An AI that uses prompts to guide its actions
  • AGENTS.md — A file for storing project-wide prompts

See this term in context: Task 1: Grammar Check