# Talking to AI: prompting well · AI in Bed

Beginner level · 6 min · https://www.aiinbed.com/learn/beginner/prompting-well

*A chatbot is only as good as what you ask it. Five habits that turn vague answers into great ones.*

A **prompt** is everything you give a chatbot before it answers. The model has never met you, can't see your screen and doesn't know what you already tried. Most bad answers come from prompts that leave it guessing.

> Imagine briefing a brilliant new colleague on their first day. They're quick and well read, but they know nothing about you, your project or your taste.

### 1. Give context

Say who it's for and why. "Explain inflation" gets a textbook paragraph. "Explain inflation to my 12-year-old who just asked why sweets cost more than last year" gets something useful.

### 2. Show an example

If you want a particular style or format, paste one. Models are excellent at copying a pattern they can see, and poor at guessing one they can't.

This trick has a name: **few-shot prompting**. One or two examples often beat a paragraph of instructions.

### 3. Say what good looks like

Length, tone, format, what to leave out. "Three bullet points, plain English, no jargon, under 80 words" is a complete spec in one line.

**Quick check:** Which prompt will most likely get the most useful answer?

A. Write an email
B. Write a short, friendly email to my landlord asking to fix the boiler this week. Keep it under 100 words.
C. EMAIL!!! URGENT!!!
D. Can you maybe possibly help with something?

Answer: B. It says who it's for, what it's about, the tone and the length. The model doesn't have to guess anything.

### 4. Ask it to think first

For maths, logic or tricky decisions, ask the model to work through the problem step by step before answering. Writing out the steps gives it room to catch its own mistakes.

### 5. Iterate, don't restart

Treat the first answer as a draft. "Shorter." "Less formal." "Why did you suggest that?" The conversation is the tool.

And always check facts that matter. A well-prompted model is still a model: it can sound certain and be wrong. That's called a **hallucination**.

**Quick check:** What is few-shot prompting?

A. Asking the same question several times
B. Including a few examples of the output you want in the prompt
C. Using very short prompts
D. Training a new model from scratch

Answer: B. You show the model a couple of examples and it follows the pattern. It is one of the most reliable prompting tricks.

**Key takeaways**

- Context, examples and a clear picture of a good answer do most of the work.
- Ask for step-by-step thinking on hard problems.
- Iterate on the draft, and verify facts that matter.

**Go deeper (free sources)**

- [Prompt Engineering Guide](https://www.promptingguide.ai/) by DAIR.AI
- [Learn Prompting](https://learnprompting.org/) by Learn Prompting