Prompt Engineering Basics
The single highest-leverage AI skill there is. Whether you're writing, coding, researching, or running a business, everything starts with asking well. This course teaches you the repeatable patterns behind prompts that work — and how to fix the ones that don't.
🎬 Watch: course introduction
What this course is, who it's for, and how to get the most out of it — about 3 minutes.
What you'll work through
Click a module to see its lessons. Lessons open in the learning platform — a free account is required.
Module 1 — How models actually respond
- What a language model is doing when it answers you 15 min read
- Why vague prompts get vague answers 15 min read
- Context is everything: what the model can and can't know 15 min read
Module 2 — The core prompt patterns
- Role, task, and format: the anatomy of a solid prompt 15 min read
- Few-shot prompting: teaching by example 15 min read
- Constraints and negative instructions 15 min read
- Chain-of-thought and step-by-step reasoning 15 min read
Module 3 — Debugging and iterating prompts
- The 6 most common prompt failures (and their fixes) 15 min read
- Change one variable at a time 15 min read
- Asking the model to critique your prompt 15 min read
- Building your own prompt library 15 min read
Module 4 — Real-world prompting projects
- Project: a research assistant workflow 15 min read
- Project: a writing and editing pipeline 15 min read
- Where to go next: from prompts to agents 15 min read
What you'll be able to do
Prerequisites
None. If you can use a chat app, you can take this course. A free account with any major AI chat tool is all you need.
Instructor
Instructor bio coming soon — written by the course author.
Ready to ask better questions?
Lessons open soon — the course is in final production.
Resources
Free downloads that go with this course.
The cheat sheet is a dense reference distilled from the course lessons. The starter project is a skeleton with TODOs that map to course sections — a starting point, not a finished product.