Prompting Course: Basics · 1 min read
Practical tips and summary of the basics course
Last good habits before the advanced course: follow-up questions, structure, step-by-step instructions, and meta-prompting.
Section 5: Practical tips that make a difference
Section titled “Section 5: Practical tips that make a difference”Here are the final good habits to take with you before you move on to the advanced course.
Dialogue and uncertainty
- End with a follow-up question (“Do you need X to answer confidently?”) – reduces guessing and surfaces hidden assumptions.
- Write what should happen if the answer is missing – e.g. ask clarifying questions, or refer to a channel/policy.
Context, steps, and reasoning
- Context: who the response is for, what has already happened, the goal of the task.
- Break up large tasks: Step 1 … Step 2 … so everything doesn’t end up as one unstructured blob.
- Reason out loud for complex questions: ask the model to show its reasoning before the conclusion (more on that in the advanced course).
Structure and meta-help
- Use clear headings in the prompt: BACKGROUND, TASK, IMPORTANT, FORMAT – the model follows structure more easily.
- Mark priorities with words like IMPORTANT/CRITICAL or bold where warranted (no guarantee, but often helpful).
- Stuck? Let a chat review your prompt or suggest a v2 based on what went wrong.
Summary of the basics course
Section titled “Summary of the basics course”Congratulations – you’ve completed the Prompting Course: Basics.
You can now:
- Build clear instructions with WHAT–WHY–HOW–WHO–TONE
- Reinforce with realistic examples
- Test and refine methodically
- Use practical habits for safer and more useful assistants
Want to go deeper? Move on to the advanced course on context engineering, advanced structure, reasoning techniques, and RAG from a prompting perspective.
Good luck with your prompting!
Test your knowledge
Question 1 of 2
Question 1 of 2
Which advice most often reduces the risk of the model guessing when it lacks information?