AI engineering glossary · Prompt context engineering
What is prompt optimisation?
Prompt optimisation: The systematic improvement of a prompt using a test set and a score, by trying variations of wording, examples and structure, by hand or by algorithm. It replaces guesswork with measured gains, and needs a good evaluation set to avoid overfitting to it.
Prompt optimisation: an example
Score five prompt variants on 100 labelled support emails and adopt the one with 92% correct routing.
Related terms
More Prompt context engineering terms
- Prompt registry
- Prompt regression testing
- Prompt sensitivity
- Prompt template
- Prompt versioning
- Pydantic validation of LLM output
- Quote-first prompting
- ReAct prompting
Where you learn it
Prompt optimisation is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.