Prompt Design Fundamentals

A useful prompt gives the model a clear task, relevant context, explicit constraints, and a defined output. It should reduce ambiguity without pretending that wording alone can enforce security or transactional limits.

Prompt design is therefore one layer of the system: it shapes behavior inside boundaries established by permissions, retrieval scope, action filters, backend validation, and human oversight.

Write prompts for reliable interpretation

• State the role, task, audience, context, constraints, and output format explicitly.
• Ground the request in trusted, minimal CRM context rather than copying broad records into the prompt.
• Separate instructions from untrusted user or retrieved content to reduce injection risk.
• Avoid using prompts to enforce limits that must hold deterministically.

Improve prompts with evidence

1. Start from representative user jobs and define what a correct output must contain and omit.
2. Test paraphrases, missing context, conflicting context, hostile instructions, and sensitive-data requests.
3. Inspect retrieval and action traces before rewriting a prompt for failures caused elsewhere.
4. Version prompts and rerun regression criteria after each change.