Prompt Patterns and Anti-Patterns

Certain structural patterns tend to yield better results across AI systems:

Effective patterns include: Breaking complex requests into sequential steps, explicitly stating constraints or requirements, providing context before questions, and using delimiter tokens to separate different parts of the prompt.

Common anti-patterns include: Ambiguous instructions, contradictory requirements, overly complex single prompts, and assuming the AI understands implied context.

Using these patterns effectively requires understanding the strengths and limitations of the specific AI system you're working with. Different models may respond better to different prompting strategies, requiring experimentation to find optimal approaches.