Prompting & Everyday Skills
Prompts That Actually Work
7 min+60 XPStep 1/10
Four moves that upgrade any prompt
Beyond task + context + format, there are four reliable upgrades:
- Give it a role — 'You are a patient math tutor' shifts tone and depth
- Show an example — paste one good sample and say 'like this'
- Ask for steps — 'think step by step' improves reasoning tasks
- Constrain the output — 'bullets, under 100 words, no jargon'
Each one narrows the prediction in a different way.
insight
Examples are the strongest lever. The model is a pattern machine — handing it a pattern beats describing one every time.