Prompt & Context Design

Advanced prompt engineering and effective context construction strategies

Principles of Prompt Structuring

    flowchart TD
    A["Effective Prompt"] --> B["Role Setting<br/>System Role"]
    A --> C["Context<br/>Context"]
    A --> D["Clear Instructions<br/>Instructions"]
    A --> E["Output Format<br/>Output Format"]
    A --> F["Examples<br/>Few-shot"]

    style A fill:#7C3AED,stroke:#6D28D9,color:#fff
    style B fill:#2563EB,stroke:#1D4ED8,color:#fff
    style C fill:#2563EB,stroke:#1D4ED8,color:#fff
    style D fill:#EA580C,stroke:#C2410C,color:#fff
    style E fill:#EA580C,stroke:#C2410C,color:#fff
    style F fill:#16A34A,stroke:#15803D,color:#fff

Prompt Pattern Library

1. Chain-of-Thought (CoT)

Well suited to tasks that require complex reasoning.

Think step by step:
1. Analyze the problem
2. Examine each element
3. Draw a conclusion

2. Few-shot Prompting

Provide examples when a consistent output format is required.

Input: [Example input 1]
Output: [Example output 1]

Input: [Example input 2]
Output: [Example output 2]

Input: [Actual input]
Output:

3. ReAct (Reason + Act)

A pattern in which the agent alternates between reasoning and acting.

Thought: [Analyze the current situation]
Action: [Tool/action to perform]
Observation: [Check the result]
Thought: [Plan the next step]
...
Final Answer: [Conclusion]

Context Window Management

Strategy	Description	Best suited for
Sliding window	Automatically drop older messages	Long conversation sessions
Summary compression	Compress past conversation into a summary	When conversation history must be retained
RAG injection	Inject only the information needed	Leveraging domain knowledge
Prompt caching	Reuse cached context for repeated content	Cost optimization

Prompt Version Control

Prompts need version control just like code:

prompts/
├── v1.0.0/
│   ├── system.txt
│   └── user_template.txt
├── v1.1.0/
│   ├── system.txt
│   └── user_template.txt
└── production -> v1.1.0/  (symbolic link)

RAG Pipeline