Back to full roadmap
topicfoundation
Anti-Patterns
Common mistakes — knowing them fixes 50% of your prompts.
1 hours2 resources
Worst offenders:
- "Write a good answer" (vague) → give specific criteria
- Negative instruction ("don't X") → steer positively ("do Y")
- Contradictory ("short but detailed") → state priority
- Vague format ("nicely formatted") → demonstrate by example
- Instructions hidden inline → use explicit sections
- One long prompt where multi-turn fits → split it
- Few-shot mixed with content → separate with
<examples>tags - Output language ambiguous → "Answer in English" explicitly