Blog/Prompting

Prompt engineering basics: 7 patterns that actually work

Role, context, task, format, plus the four failure modes behind almost every disappointing answer.

By The Daniel (Daniel Szalai)

2026-07-05 · 9 min read

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A prompt is a brief, not a spell

There are no magic words. What looks like a magic phrase is usually just a clearer instruction: it narrows the space of acceptable answers, so the model has fewer ways to be vaguely right.

Treat every prompt as a brief to a fast, widely read colleague who has never met your client and cannot see your screen.

The four patterns you will use daily

These four cover most everyday work. Learn them properly before collecting anything more exotic.

01Role and audience "Explain this to a client who is not technical" changes every sentence: who is writing, and who reads it.

02Worked example Show one input and the output you would accept. One example beats three paragraphs of description.

03Constraints Say what not to do: no bullet lists, no adjectives, nothing invented that is not in the source.

04Step by step For anything with logic, ask for the reasoning first and the answer last. Errors become visible.

Three patterns for harder work

When the task is longer than a paragraph or the stakes are higher, these three earn their keep.

01Draft then critique Ask for a draft, then ask the same model to review it against your criteria and rewrite once.

02Two roles Have it argue both sides, the enthusiast and the sceptic, before it recommends anything.

03Ask before answering Tell it to ask you up to three questions first. It surfaces the context you forgot to give.

Related track

Learn this properly in five minutes a day

This article is the summary. The app is the practice: short lessons, a quiz after each one, and a glossary you build as you read.

Get the app

The four failure modes

Almost every bad answer is one of these, and each has a fix that takes ten seconds.

01Too little context You described the file instead of pasting it.

02Two tasks at once Split them. You get two half-answers otherwise.

03No definition of good You never said what an acceptable output looks like, so you got the average of everything.

04Confident invention Anything factual needs a source in the prompt, or a rule that missing information must be named as missing.

A template you can reuse

Keep one template in a note app and adapt it. After a few weeks you will write it from memory, and that is the actual skill.

Reusable brief

Role: you are <role>, writing for <audience>.
Context: <paste the real material>
Task: <one verb, one deliverable>
Format: <length, structure, tone>
Rules: do not invent facts. If something is missing,
list it as missing instead of guessing.
First ask me up to three questions if anything is unclear.