What it means
Writing one good prompt is useful. Prompt engineering goes further: designing prompts for a repeated task, testing them against many real examples, measuring results and improving them. Techniques include clear structure, examples, step-by-step instructions, output schemas and rules for uncertain cases.
In applications, prompt engineering also covers what data is included, in what order and how the output is checked.
Why it matters for a business
In business systems, a prompt runs thousands of times. Small improvements in accuracy or format reliability add up to large savings in review time and errors.
A business example
Things to watch
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Build a test set of real examples before tuning.
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Measure results, not impressions.
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Version prompts like code.
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Retest when the model changes.
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Keep prompts readable so others on the team can maintain them.