Instructions & Examples Vocabulary

the order of authority that determines which instruction wins when directions conflict

“The assistant followed the higher-priority safety rule when the user request conflicted with it.”

asking a model to perform a task without giving an example in the prompt

“The instruction 'Classify each review as positive or negative' was a zero-shot prompt.”

providing a small number of examples in the prompt to demonstrate the desired behavior

“Three labeled support tickets gave the model a few-shot pattern for classifying the rest.”

a demonstration included in the current input that guides a response without changing the model's parameters

“The sample input and ideal output served as an in-context example.”

an example that disproves a general claim or shows what the desired output must avoid

“I added a counterexample so the model would not mistake polite disagreement for approval.”

an unusual but valid situation near a task's boundaries where normal assumptions may fail

“An empty spreadsheet is an edge case the extraction prompt still needs to handle.”

a character or marker that clearly separates instructions, examples, or data

“Triple backticks acted as a delimiter around the text to summarize.”

a reusable prompt structure with placeholders for task-specific information

“The team used one prompt template and replaced the audience, evidence, and format fields.”

a focused question that resolves missing or ambiguous information before work continues

“The model asked a clarification question about currency before building the budget.”