Lesson 02: Prompts and context for clear instructions
Send an AI a notice with “help me handle this,” and it might return a summary or promotional copy. Either could be well written; handle does not specify the task.
That is a useful starting point for prompts. A clear task often resolves much of the confusion without a supposedly universal formula.
What should it do, and what information does it have?
Prompt usually means model input or instructions. Context is information available for this response: supplied documents, retained conversation, and tool results. Instructions are themselves part of context; the two terms are related.
Ask what output you want and which evidence it should use. Two points for new students, based on B, is concrete. Add which facts must be preserved and the task becomes easy to inspect.
A professional librarian role can affect tone but does not supply this library’s loan period. A role does not reveal a private handbook, and repeated demands for accuracy do not provide a missing fact.
Give the same passage a different request
Compare “summarize these borrowing rules” with “explain them in two points for new students, retaining the limit and loan period without extra rules.” Supply the same B to both, so the instruction is the variable.
A suitable second answer is short: up to three books, fourteen days each. If it adds mandatory online renewal, look for support. B says nothing about that; neat formatting does not establish the fact.
You now have two checks: whether the format has two points and whether facts are preserved. Separating them reveals more than an impression that the answer improved.
Why not paste the entire handbook?
Context capacity depends on the model and application. Even within capacity, important rules buried among news, contents pages, and old versions can be harder to use. Short relevant evidence with intact conditions is easier to review. Long conversations do not guarantee every earlier message remains available.
Today, change just the format: request one sentence and then two points about B. Record whether both keep three books and fourteen days, and whether they add rules. Next we consider where evidence comes from.
Two checks to use
An acceptable summary allows three books at once for fourteen days each. The two-point version should retain those facts. Different wording is fine; changed numbers, omissions, and unsupported additions need correction.
Further reading: Anthropic: Context windows
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