# Prompt

Concept · [Building with AI](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ai)

Also called: prompting, prompts, prompt engineering, instructions

The instructions or question you give an AI tool in everyday words. Clear, specific prompts get better results.

**For example:** Weak prompt: 'Make me a website.' Better prompt: 'Make a one-page site for a mobile dog groomer in Tulsa with services, prices and a booking request form.'

## Connects to (24)

- [LLM](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/llm): Large language model.
- [Code](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/code): Exact written instructions that tell a computer what to do, step by step.
- [Context window](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/context-window): How much text an LLM can take into account at one time.
- [Few-shot prompting](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/few-shot-prompting): Including a few worked examples in a prompt so the model copies the pattern.
- [Temperature](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/temperature): A setting that controls how random an AI model's word choices are.
- [AI](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/terms/ai): Artificial intelligence.
- [Vibe coding](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/vibe-coding): Building software by describing what you want to an AI tool and accepting the code it writes, often without reading that code closely.
- [AI agent](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ai-agent): An AI tool that does more than answer a question.
- [Hallucination](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/hallucination): When an AI model states something false or invented as though it were true.
- [Fine-tuning](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/fine-tuning): Extra training of an existing model on a smaller, narrower set of examples, so it suits one task or style.
- [System prompt](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/system-prompt): Standing instructions that the builder of an AI product gives the model before any user types.
- [Evals](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/evals): Tests that check whether the outputs of a model or an AI product meet the criteria its builders set.
- [Multimodal](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/multimodal): Describes a model that works with more than one type of content, such as text plus images or audio.
- [Sycophancy](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/sycophancy): The habit AI models have of telling you what you want to hear: agreeing too readily, praising weak ideas or giving up a correct answer…
- [Markdown](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/markdown): A simple way to format plain text with symbols, such as # for a heading and \* for a bullet.
- [Agent skills](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/agent-skills): A packaged set of instructions, sometimes with scripts, that an agent loads when a task calls for it, such as how to write a press release…
- [AI literacy](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ai-literacy): Enough understanding of AI to use it well and safely: what it is good and bad at, how to write a prompt, how to check its work and what…
- [Context engineering](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/context-engineering): Deciding what information, instructions, examples and tools to put in front of an AI model for each task, and what to leave out.
- [Prompt optimization](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/prompt-optimization): Improving a prompt through repeated testing: change it, run it against a set of examples, measure results and keep the better version.
- [Gamma](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/gamma): An AI tool that makes slide presentations, documents and simple web pages from a prompt or notes.
- [Google AI Studio](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/google-ai-studio): Google's web tool for trying Gemini models, testing prompts and getting an API key to build them into an app.
- [Gemini Prompt Optimizer](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/gemini-prompt-optimizer): A Google Cloud tool that rewrites a prompt's instructions and tests the versions against examples to find one that scores better.
- [Midjourney](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/midjourney): An AI tool that makes images from text prompts.
- [Google AI Professional Certificate](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/google-ai-professional-certificate): An online Google Career Certificate about using AI at work.

Map view: https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/prompt