Prompt Engineering
20%Prompt Engineering covers advanced techniques for getting optimal outputs from Claude — including structured prompting, chain-of-thought, and system prompt architecture.
Key Topics
- ·XML tag structuring
- ·Chain-of-thought and extended thinking
- ·Few-shot example selection
- ·System prompt design
- ·Reducing hallucination
Sample Question
You need Claude to reason through a complex multi-step problem before giving a final answer. What's the most effective approach?
- A. Tell Claude to 'think carefully'
- B. Use extended thinking or ask Claude to reason step-by-step before concluding
- C. Give Claude a very detailed system prompt
- D. Use few-shot examples of the final answer format
Explanation: Extended thinking or explicit chain-of-thought instructions allow Claude to work through the problem systematically. Vague instructions like 'think carefully' are less reliable; system prompts set context but don't drive reasoning; few-shot examples help with format but not step-by-step reasoning.