The Art of Writing Good Prompts: An Engineer's Perspective

Everyone talks about prompt engineering, but most advice boils down to "be specific." Here's a more systematic framework.

The TRACE Framework

1. Task — What exactly should the model do?
2. Role — What persona should it adopt?
3. Artifacts — What format should the output take?
4. Context — What background information does it need?
5. Examples — What does good output look like?

Key Principles

1. Specificity beats length
2. Show, don't tell — Examples are worth more than instructions
3. Iterate systematically — Change one thing at a time

Conclusion

Treat prompts like code: version them, test them, and refactor them.