AI prompting essentials

Give AI better context, constraints and a clear outcome.

A useful prompt is a brief for a task. It tells the system what you need, gives it relevant information and explains what a good answer should look like.

Use four ingredients

Task: what should happen. Context: what the system needs to know. Constraints: what it must respect. Format: how to present the answer.

Try a practical example

“Summarize these meeting notes for the project team. List decisions, owners and deadlines in a table. If a deadline is missing, write ‘not specified’. Use only the notes below.”

Review and refine

Check the result against the source. If it misses something, clarify that part of the prompt instead of adding vague requests such as ‘make it better’.