Lesson 4: Context and delimiting the input
The model can't read your mind. If you don't give it the background — who it's for, what the goal is, what constraints apply — it will guess. And if you mix your instruction with the text it should work on, it may not know where the instruction ends and the material begins. In this lesson we practic
Imagine you hand someone a page and say 'shorten this' — without saying who it's for, and without marking where the page ends and the instruction begins. Put the text under a 'Text:' label and say 'summarize the text below' — and suddenly it's clear.
- context
- The background the model needs to answer well: who the answer is for, the goal, and any constraints.
- delimiting the input
- Clearly separating the instruction from the text being worked on — with a label, quotes, or 'the text below'.
- grounding in the text
- Directing the model to answer from the material you gave, not its general knowledge: 'based only on the text below'.
