How to write an effective GPT-3 prompt

GPT-3 can tell bad jokes and write accidentally hilarious poems about your life, but it can also help you do your job better. The catch: you need to help it do its job better, too. To get the best results, write a clear prompt with ample context.

Test your prompt

• There’s very little chance that the first time you put your prompt into GPT-3, it’ll spit out exactly what you are looking for. You need to write, test, refine, test and so on, until you consistently get an outcome you’re happy with.
• I recommend testing your prompt in OpenAI’s GTT-3 playground or with Zapier’s OpenAI integration.

Give examples

• Examples in the prompt can help the AI understand the type of response you are looking for
• End with “Agent:” to indicate where you want the AI to start typing
• Example: examples can be helpful for math, coding, parsing, and anything else where the specifics matter a lot

Provide a word count for the response, so you don’t get a 500-word answer when you were looking for a sentence

Define the expected formats

• GPT-3 can output various code languages like Python and HTML as well as visual styles like charts and CSVs
• Telling it the format of both your input and your desired output will help you get exactly what you need
• Example: You want to add the transcript of your latest podcast interview but need it converted to HTML

Use some of these handy expressions

• Let’s think step by step
• Thinking backwards
• In the style of [famous person]”
• As a [insert profession/role]” These help frame the bot’s knowledge, so it knows what it knows-and what it doesn’t

Offer context

• Think about exactly what you want the AI to generate, and provide a prompt that’s tailored specifically to that
• Example: “Write a professional but friendly email”
• This can be adapted to any sort of business task, e.g. “write a formal executive summary.”

Automate your GPT-3 prompts

• With Zapier’s OpenAI integrations, you can automate your prompts, so they run whenever things happen in the apps you use most
• Example: automatically draft email responses, brainstorm content ideas, or create task lists

Include helpful information upfront

• Give the AI the information it needs, so it can reference it directly
• For example, you could copy your resume or LinkedIn profile and paste it at the top of your prompt like this
• Another common use case is getting the AI to summarize an article for you

Source