🧠 Prompt Engineering 101

🎯 Goal

Learn how to write better prompts to get the most out of ChatGPT and similar tools — for all kinds of tasks, not just coding.

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🚀 Why This Matters

Most people write prompts like this:

“Explain X”
“Write code for Y”
“What’s a good name for a feature?”

That’s the equivalent of Googling "stuff".

Let’s go pro.

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📦 Core Concepts of Prompting

1. Context is King

LLMs love context. The more you give, the better the output.

❌ “Write a blog post about AI.”
✅ “Write a 500-word blog post about how small dev agencies like MarsBased can use AI to automate documentation. Audience: CTOs. Tone: witty but professional.”

✅ “You're a senior backend dev at MarsBased. Given this GitHub issue, propose 3 implementation options with tradeoffs.”

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2. Role Assignment

“You're a senior full-stack dev.”
“Act like a sassy but accurate technical recruiter.”
“You're a product manager writing internal release notes.”

Roles change everything. Try it.

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3. Examples > Explanations

Few-shot prompting is powerful.

❌ “Write me an error message.”
✅ “Here are 2 examples of error messages from our system:\n\n1. 'We couldn’t connect to GitHub. Check your token.'\n2. 'Your session expired. Please log in again.'\n\nNow write a message for a failed API sync with Linear.”

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4. Constraints Help

“Explain this like I’m five.”
“Summarize this in 3 bullet points.”
“Reply in markdown, use emojis.”
“Write code with comments in Spanish.”

Constraints = better outputs.

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5. Iterate, Don’t Expect Magic

You’re allowed to keep going:

“That’s too long. Can you shorten it?”
“Add more sarcasm.”
“Use TypeScript instead.”
“Rewrite using a more optimistic tone.”

LLMs love feedback.

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🔧 Dev Use Cases

• 🔍 Debugging:
  Paste an error and ask for causes + fixes.

• 📄 PR Summaries:
  “Summarize this PR in 3 sentences for a non-dev.”

• 🧠 Naming things:
  “Suggest 10 function names. Context:…”

• 📜 Commit messages:
  “Write a conventional commit for this diff.”

• 🤖 GitHub Copilot prompts:
  Use natural language to write comments that guide code generation.

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💼 Non-Dev Use Cases

• ✍️ Docs:
  “Turn this bullet list into internal documentation.”
  “Write a changelog based on these commits.”

• 📣 Marketing:
  “Write a tweet thread from this blog post.”
  “Summarize this podcast transcript for LinkedIn.”

• 📅 Planning:
  “Create a rough roadmap based on these 4 Linear issues.”

• 🧑‍🏫 Hiring:
  “Generate 5 technical interview questions for a senior Vue dev.”

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⚙️ Bonus: API-Level Prompting (1 Minute)

If using OpenAI's API:

{
  "model": "gpt-4",
  "temperature": 0.7,
  "messages": [
    { "role": "system", "content": "You are a senior Rails engineer." },
    { "role": "user", "content": "Explain the pros and cons of Hotwire." }
  ]
}

• system: Sets the role/persona
• user: The actual prompt
• temperature: 0 = deterministic, 1 = creative/random

🎁 Cheat Code: Prompt Structure

• [Persona or role]
• [Clear task]
• [Context]
• [Constraints]
• [Optional: examples]
• [Optional: output formatting]

🔥