The Prompt Recipe

Fundamentals gave you a clear task, an explicit format and a role in the system prompt. This section added delimiters around the text you paste, and examples. Together they make one checklist for the message itself: the task (what to do), the context (the facts it needs, in delimiters when they are long), the format (how the answer should look) and, when the pattern is hard to describe, examples.

Suggest a weekend plan for two people.
We are in Porto in March, we love food and hate early mornings.
Reply as 3 bullet points: morning, afternoon, evening.

Line by line: task, context, format. No examples needed, because a 3 bullet plan is easy to describe.

You rarely need every part, and the order is flexible. The checklist earns its keep when an answer disappoints: a generic answer usually lacks context, a messy one lacks format, and an answer in the wrong pattern needs an example.