What is Prompt Engineering?
Prompt Engineering — The practice of designing and refining instructions given to AI models to get accurate, useful, and consistent outputs.
What is prompt engineering?
Prompt engineering is the practice of crafting instructions for AI models to produce desired outputs. It involves choosing the right wording, structure, and context to guide the AI toward accurate, useful, and consistent responses.
How does prompt engineering relate to AI agents?
AI agent definitions are essentially advanced prompt engineering. Instead of writing a one-off prompt, an agent definition creates a reusable, structured set of instructions that includes a persona, workflow, rules, and output format. This makes the AI's behavior predictable and consistent across uses.
Key prompt engineering techniques used in agents
| Technique | How agents use it | |-----------|------------------| | Persona setting | "You are a senior security engineer" | | Structured workflows | Step-by-step review processes | | Output formatting | Severity-rated feedback templates | | Constraint rules | "Never suggest style-only changes" | | Few-shot examples | Sample inputs and expected outputs |
Is prompt engineering the same as writing an agent?
Writing an agent is a form of prompt engineering, but it goes further. A prompt is a single instruction. An agent definition is a complete behavioral specification — persona, capabilities, workflow, rules, output format, and tool references — that produces consistent results across conversations.