Glossary
Prompt
A prompt is whatever you type (or say) to an AI: your question, request, or instructions. The clearer and more specific your prompt, the better the answer: context and details matter more than magic words.
A prompt is simply your side of the conversation. “Write a birthday message” is a prompt. So is “Write a short, warm birthday message for my 70-year-old aunt who loves gardening, no exclamation marks.” Both work, but the second gets you something you can actually send.
Think of phoning a plumber. “Something’s wrong with the water” gets you twenty questions and a vague quote. “The kitchen tap drips even when fully closed, started Tuesday, it’s a single-lever mixer” gets you a diagnosis on the spot. The AI is the same tradesperson: it can only work with what you tell it.
The good news: there’s no secret syntax. Who you are, what you need, what you’ll use it for, what tone you want: that’s most of the craft, and the rest is prompt engineering.
Where you’ll meet this
The text box at the bottom of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini is the prompt box, and everything you put there is a prompt, including pasted files and images. If your answers keep coming out generic, run your prompt through our prompt fixer: it rewrites it and explains why each change helps.