Heard a dev at a meetup say prompt engineering is just "spelling out the obvious"

I was at a small AI meetup in Austin last Thursday and one guy basically said that whole field is just writing clear instructions for something that can't infer context. It stung because I spent 3 months tweaking prompts for a customer support bot and felt like a pro. Is there any real skill to it or is he right?

2 comments

2 Comments

logan_thomas871d ago

He's wrong but I get why he said it. "Spelling out the obvious" only works when you already know the obvious stuff to spell out. The real skill is knowing which obvious things the model actually needs. Like I had a bot that kept mixing up "schedule a meeting" and "remind me about a meeting" until I added two words: "new" and "existing". That's not just clear instructions. It's understanding how the model thinks and where its blind spots are.

patel.leo6h ago

Figured out something similar with my own setup. The trick is thinking of it like teaching a new guy on the job - you gotta point out where they always get tripped up, not just explain the whole process from scratch.