Prompting Skill track
Prompt Engineering
The moves that take your prompts from vague to executable.
A practical track on writing prompts that produce useful output the first time. Four content modules covering the four moves, examples, structured thinking, and constraint discipline. Plus a capstone quiz. About an hour end to end.
Take the diagnostic first.
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Start the diagnosticBy the end of this track, you will
- Write prompts the model can act on without guessing.
- Use examples to encode tone, format, and edge cases.
- Spot the situations where chain-of-thought actually helps and the ones it does not.
- Stack constraints the model respects without crossing into the over-stacked spiral.
Syllabus
Module 1
Before you start
A short orientation. What this track teaches, what it deliberately leaves out, and how to skip what you already know.
- LWhat this track is for~4 min
Module 2
Shape your prompts
Four moves that take a one-line request from vague to executable. Start here if you mostly write prompts the way you write Google searches.
- LWhy one-line prompts fail~6 min
- LA worked example~5 min
- LFailure modes: when the four moves backfire~6 min
- LRole priming and persona~5 min
- DDrill: iterate after a bad first response~6 min
Module 3
Few-shot and examples
One good example beats a paragraph of description. When to use examples, how many, the patterns that work, and the three ways examples go wrong.
- LWhy examples work~5 min
- LThree mistakes with examples~6 min
- LExamples for structured outputs~6 min
- LHow many examples is too many~4 min
- LNegative examples: showing what not to do~5 min
- DDrill: find the broken examples~5 min
Module 4
Chain of thought
The cheap reliability trick: ask the model to think before answering. Works on logic and analysis, less useful on generation, and partly redundant on reasoning models.
- LWhen thinking out loud helps~5 min
- LReasoning models vs prompted chain-of-thought~6 min
- LStructuring the thinking~5 min
- LAuditing the reasoning~6 min
- LWhen chain-of-thought actively hurts~4 min
- DDrill: trust the reasoning?~5 min
Module 5
Constraint stacking
Specific, checkable rules make the difference between an almost-right draft and a ship-ready one. The three tiers, the do-not list, when stacking goes too far, and how to iterate.
- LMake the constraints checkable~5 min
- LThe do and do-not pair~4 min
- LWhen stacking goes too far~6 min
- LIteration: the half of prompting nobody talks about~6 min
- DDrill: rescue the over-stacked prompt~5 min
Module 6
Capstone
Eight questions across the four modules. Clear 70% to earn the certificate.
- QFinal quizTake~14 min