Prompt Engineering — Curriculum
Prompt Engineering & Structured Output · 20% of the exam. 6 lessons.
1. System Prompts vs. User Messages
Where the role, constraints, and per-turn task belong, and why mixing them up causes drift in multi-turn conversations.
2. XML Structuring and Few-Shot Prompting
Using XML-like tags to separate prompt components and using worked examples to pin down exact output format.
3. Chain-of-Thought: When It Helps
When asking Claude to reason step by step improves accuracy, and when it just adds latency and cost for no benefit.
4. Prefill and Guaranteed Structured Output
Seeding the start of Claude's response to force format, and the difference between asking for JSON and actually constraining it.
5. Validation and Retry Loops
Programmatically validating structured output against a schema and re-prompting with the specific error, not a generic retry.
6. Common Prompt Anti-Patterns
Recognizable prompt design mistakes the exam tests: negative-only instructions, task overload, and self-review in one call.