AI engineering glossary · Prompt context engineering
What is user prompt?
User prompt (also called User message): The message in a conversation that carries the actual request or question from the person (or program) using the model. It changes on every turn, unlike the fixed rules in the system prompt. In an API call it is sent with the role 'user'.
User prompt: an example
In a chat, the user prompt is 'Summarise this GST notice in three bullets', followed by the pasted notice text.
Related terms
More Prompt context engineering terms
- XML tags in prompts
- Zero-shot chain-of-thought
- Zero-shot prompting
- Analogical prompting
- Assistant prefill
- Automatic prompt engineer
- Batch API
- Chain-of-thought faithfulness
Where you learn it
User prompt is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.