Iterate, iterate, iterate your prompts

Sci-fi has set our expectations for LLMs incorrectly. People write a one or two-line prompt and give up when they don’t get the expected output. To effectively use LLMs today, you need to adopt a particular habit of mind. Just like writing in school, the only way you get good writing is to:

Iterate, iterate, iterate.

Prompting is much easier for people who understand that communication is hard, and the only way to arrive at a mutual understanding is in incremental steps. Start by spelling out the task you’d like the LLM to perform. Then depending on the output, start layering on different conditions, such as the role it's supposed to take. An insightful design architect. The most moving copywriter. Or the most empathetic customer support. You can add examples of what you’re looking for based on the output. Is the output too sale-sy? Tell the LLM to tone it down. Not creative enough? Tell it to go wild on creativity.

You can dictate style and what good looks like. If you can’t describe it, find examples. Look at the output again. Not quite right? Ask it to follow specific principles you know that make good output if you were to describe it to a junior colleague.

Lay out guiding principles. Ask it to reason out the task step by step (chain of thought) before tackling the task. Don’t be overly specific. It’s easy to get lackluster output when you over-specify what you want. Finding the right balance also requires experimentation and iteration over time.

There are many other ways to improve the output. The key is to iterate, iterate, iterate.