There are several different types of prompts and some may be more geared toward your tasks and goals than others. Consider the following prompts and their use cases.
- Direct prompts provide the model with direct instructions, often without context and/or without examples. This type of basic prompt can be useful for simple tasks, such as translations, summarizations, and brainstorming, but can lack the nuance required for more complex tasks.
- Multishot prompts provide the model with one or more examples of the user's desired input-output pairs—"input" refers to the user's prompt and "output" refers to the mode's response—to help the model better understand the task given and what their outputs should look like. Use this type of prompt for complex tasks that may require specific responses.
- Chain of Thought (CoT) prompts ask the model to break down their reasoning into several intermediate steps, in an attempt to force it to concentrate and reason out each step and so generate a more well thought out response. Use CoT prompts for long and/or highly complex tasks.
