prompting

Definition

Steering a model purely through what you put in its input, with the weights untouched — demonstrations, step instructions, output-format specifications. The appeal is iteration speed: you can test a change in seconds rather than in a training run. The weakness is portability, since a phrasing tuned for one model often does nothing for another, which is what fine-tuning buys you instead.

Explainers using this term

• Chain-of-Thought from Scratch — What Changes When You Make a Model Show Its WorkChain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models
• Test-Time Scaling — How Models Get Better by Thinking LongerChain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models
• The Science of Prompt Engineering — What Is Proven and What Is FolkloreChain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models