Prompt Anatomy Vocabulary

the specific outcome a prompt asks the model to achieve

“State the objective first: compare the three proposals and recommend one.”

the intended reader or user whose knowledge, needs, and expectations should shape the response

“Naming new managers as the audience led the model to explain each legal term.”

the relevant background, conversation, and source material available for interpreting a request

“I supplied the customer history as context before asking for a reply.”

the boundary of what a task includes and excludes

“Keep the scope to onboarding emails; do not redesign the product tour.”

a limit or rule the response must respect

“The 200-word limit and ban on legal jargon were explicit constraints.”

a premise treated as true for the task even though it has not been established

“List every assumption you make about the budget before calculating the forecast.”

a condition the result must satisfy to be acceptable

“One requirement was that every recommendation cite a supplied policy.”

an outcome deliberately excluded from a task to prevent unnecessary work

“Choosing a new database is a non-goal; we are only improving the query.”

the concrete artifact or result a prompt asks the model to produce

“The deliverable is a decision memo with a table and a five-line recommendation.”

an observable condition used to decide whether an output meets a requirement

“An acceptance criterion required every CSV row to contain a valid date.”

a shared checklist of conditions that marks a task as complete

“Our definition of done included passing tests, updated docs, and no unresolved warnings.”