20 AI Prompting Techniques

1. Give AI a role, because 'do the thing' is not exactly a job description. 2. Explain the task clearly, unless you enjoy receiving beautifully written nonsense. 3. Add context, because AI skipped the meeting where everyone apparently discussed everything. 4. Be specific, because vague prompts create answers with the confidence of a guy who didn't study. 5. Add constraints so your 100-word answer doesn't mysteriously become a PhD thesis. 6. Specify the output format, because paragraphs aren't always invited to the party. 7. Give examples, basically showing AI the homework before asking it to do the homework. 8. Use zero-shot prompting when the task is simple enough to survive without examples. 9. Use few-shot prompting when AI needs a couple of examples before the light bulb turns on. 10. Try role prompting and suddenly your chatbot has a profession, responsibilities, and zero salary. 11. Use step-by-step prompting when the problem looks like it was designed by your worst math teacher. 12. Use Socratic prompting when you want AI to question you like an extremely patient philosopher. 13. Use critic prompting when you need AI to roast its own answer professionally. 14. Use reverse prompting when you have the destination but absolutely no idea how to drive there. 15. Use comparison prompting when choosing between Option A and Option B becomes your entire personality. 16. Ask for structured outputs when you need JSON instead of an enthusiastic wall of text. 17. For research, ask for multiple viewpoints before declaring the first answer internet law. 18. Iterate after the first response, because your first prompt isn't a sacred ancient manuscript. 19. Focus on context engineering, because smarter AI still cannot magically download your brain. 20. Remember the golden rule: better inputs = better outputs, which is annoyingly simple but annoyingly true.