Glossary | AI & Development
System Prompt
Developer supplied instructions that set an AI model's role, rules and behaviour at a higher priority than ordinary user input.
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System prompt is the common name for instructions supplied by an application developer to define a model's role, constraints, output format and rules. Depending on the provider and API, these may be called system instructions, developer messages or simply instructions. They are given higher priority than ordinary user messages. A customer service prompt might cover tone, approved sources, prohibited actions and the output format used for a handoff.
Sources and further reading
Check the source, not just the summary
- OpenAI prompt engineering guidedevelopers.openai.com
- OWASP prompt injection guidancegenai.owasp.org
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