System Prompt
Definition pending
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Practical example
The system prompt is the hidden instructions that set the model's behavior for the entire conversation. It's your most powerful control surface — and it's visible only to you, not the user. A good system prompt is 200–800 tokens: define the model's role, output format, constraints, and safety rules. Longer prompts consume context window and dilute attention.
Workflow example
Manage system prompts like code: (1) version in git alongside your application code, (2) A/B test prompt variants — measure user satisfaction, task completion rate, and guardrail trigger rate, (3) monitor system prompt effectiveness weekly: inject test queries that probe each constraint, (4) if constraint compliance drops, your system prompt may be too long (attention dilution) or has conflicting instructions (model resolves ambiguity unpredictably).