Prompt Engineering Best Practices

What this best practices guide is

Vendor-neutral prompt engineering best practices, checked against the official prompting guides from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google. It covers clear instructions, prompt structure and long context, few-shot examples, reasoning and prompt chaining, output and parameter control, and how to test, iterate on and maintain prompts as models change.

It has 6 chapters and 24 practices, each with why it matters, what to do and what to avoid. For developers writing prompts for LLM features.

Chapter by chapter

1. Clear instructions and context (4 practices)

Most bad outputs come from prompts that leave the model to guess. These practices close the gaps a reader with no background would fall into.

2. Prompt structure and long context (4 practices)

A prompt that mixes instructions, documents and examples needs clear boundaries. These practices make each part easy for the model to find and hard to confuse.

3. Examples and few-shot prompting (4 practices)

Examples are one of the most reliable ways to steer format, tone and structure. These practices make them teach the pattern without being copied word for word.

4. Reasoning, decomposition and prompt chaining (4 practices)

Newer models reason internally, which changes how much step-by-step prompting you need. These practices cover when to split work and how to match prompts to the kind of model.

5. Output format and model settings (4 practices)

The shape of the answer and the sampling settings matter as much as the instructions. These practices keep output predictable and avoid settings that newer models no longer need.

6. Testing, iteration and upkeep (4 practices)

A prompt is only better if you can show it. These practices turn prompt writing from guesswork into a loop you can measure and maintain.

How it works on Sefism

The guide reads like a short course: a syllabus, then one chapter per page in a focused reader, with a quiz at the end of each chapter for members. The opening chapters are open to everyone. Adding it to your account uses credits, opens every chapter and keeps your progress.

Every claim is checked against the sources listed on the page (5 cited).