You've learned what Large Language Models are and gained a high-level understanding of how they function. The next step is learning how to interact with them effectively. LLMs don't inherently know what you want them to do; you need to provide instructions.

This chapter focuses on prompts, the inputs you provide to guide an LLM's output. You will learn:

• What constitutes a prompt in the context of LLMs.
• Fundamental techniques for writing clear and effective prompts.
• How to structure instructions and provide examples (few-shot prompting) to improve results.
• Methods for influencing the length and format of the model's response.
• Common difficulties faced when prompting and how to approach them.

By the end of this chapter, you will understand the basic principles of prompting and be ready to start crafting simple instructions to communicate with LLMs.