AI Literacy / Glossary

Prompt

A prompt is the instruction, question or example you give an AI tool to tell it what you want. Clear prompts with a goal, context and the format you need usually get much better results.

A prompt can be a short question, a long set of instructions, a document to work with or an example of the style you want. The AI uses all of it to predict a fitting answer.

Good prompts say what the goal is, who the answer is for, what background matters and what shape the answer should have, such as a list, a table or three short options. Adding an example often helps more than adding adjectives.

Prompting is a conversation: if the first answer misses, say what to change. And remember that whatever you type into a prompt may be stored, so leave out passwords, personal details and confidential work information.