System prompt
The set of instructions, invisible to the user, that fix the assistant's role, tone, rules and limits before any conversation. This is where the persona is defined, what it may and may not say, and how it escalates. The backbone of behavior.
- Appeared
- A standard mechanism of chat LLMs from 2022.
- Tactics
- Here we encode the [persona](#persona), [guardrails](#guardrails) and the [fallback](#fallback) rules. A poorly written system prompt yields a generic assistant; a well-written one often removes the need for [fine-tuning](#fine-tuning).
Related terms
“System prompt” is part of Glossary · AI Chatbot — part of the Atlas, Websem's reference of AI search, marketing and data terms.