Real World Prompting · Lesson 1
Prompting Techniques Recap
Seven essential techniques — from clarity of instructions to XML tags and chain-of-thought — that separate single-query prompts from production-quality ones.
Practical exercise
What to do after this lesson
Take any prompt from your project and sequentially apply all 7 techniques: add a system prompt with a role, wrap input data in XML tags, insert one example of the desired output, ask Claude to reason step-by-step, and specify the exact response format.
Task grader
Take any prompt from your project and sequentially apply all 7 techniques: add a system prompt with a role, wrap input data in XML tags, insert one example of the desired output, ask Claude to reason step-by-step, and specify the exact response format.
Ready-to-use prompt
Template for this lesson
Copy and adapt to your context. Text in angle brackets should be replaced.
You are a [role with domain expertise].
<task>
[Clear task description without ambiguity]
</task>
<data>
{{INPUT_DATA}}
</data>
<example>
Input: [example input]
Output: [example desired output]
</example>
First think step-by-step inside <thinking> tags, then give your final answer in <output>.Prompt sandbox
Common mistakes
What people get wrong