What is Prompt Engineering?

Prompt Engineering

Prompt Engineering is the art and science of designing and optimizing inputs (prompts) to get the best result from a model.

Key Concepts

It involves more than just asking a question. It includes:

• Context Setting: "You are an expert industrial automation engineer."
• Constraint Definition: "Answer in JSON format only."
• Few-Shot Learning: Providing a few examples of the desired input-output format within the prompt.

Application

In automated systems, prompts are often pre-engineered "under the hood". For example, a future feature in ZMA software might use a hidden, carefully crafted prompt to ask an LLM to "Analyze these vibration statistics and summarize the health status in 3 bullet points" ensuring the output is always consistent for the end-user.