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Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning vocabulary · Prompts and Retrieval

System prompt

Meaning in artificial intelligence & machine learning, with examples

nounCommon term

In artificial intelligence & machine learning, system prompt means: Instructions given to a chat model before the conversation starts, which set its role, rules, tone and limits for all the messages that follow.

In Turkish: sistem istemi, sistem komutu

How it is used

Written by developers, not end users, and usually hidden from them. Teams keep it in version control and test changes carefully, because a small edit can change behavior everywhere. It is contrasted with the user prompt or user message.

Example sentences

  1. The system prompt tells the assistant to answer only questions about our products.

  2. After we shortened the system prompt, responses became faster and cheaper.

Common collocations

  • write a system prompt
  • update the system prompt
  • system prompt instructions
  • leaked system prompt
  • promptThe text or other input given to a generative model to tell it what to do, such as a question, an instruction or a few examples followed by a task.
  • prompt engineeringThe practice of designing, testing and improving prompts so that a model gives accurate, useful and consistent outputs for a task.
  • guardrailA rule or check placed around a model to stop harmful, off-topic or unsafe inputs and outputs, for example a filter that blocks personal data in answers.
  • jailbreakA prompt or technique designed to trick a model into ignoring its safety rules and producing content it is meant to refuse.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Prompts and Retrieval

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