Prompt Engineering — From Structure to Evaluation (Mini Project 1)

- Learn foundational prompt styles: vague vs. specific, structured formatting, XML-tagging - Practice prompt design for controlled output: enforcing strict JSON formats with Pydantic - Discover failure modes and label incorrect LLM behavior (e.g., hallucinations, format issues) - Build early evaluators to measure LLM output quality and rule-following - Write your first "LLM-as-a-judge" prompts to automate pass/fail decisions - Iterate prompts based on analysis-feedback loops and evaluator results - Explore advanced prompting techniques: multi-turn, rubric-based human alignment, and A/B testing - Experiment with `dspy` for signature-based structured prompting and validation