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Video: Creating Advanced Prompts

Examples of organizing context, using examples,
controlling the shape of the output, and improving

in stages instead of adding instructions at random.

Duration: about 25 minutes | Level: Intermediate
Learning objective: Structure a prompt so that its

output can be compared and reviewed.
Source: Microsoft [19].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAjzkaCdRok

Verified: June 6, 2026

2.8 Iterative Refinement: Diagnose Before You Rewrite

◆ Key idea: change one factor and learn from the result.

Do not rewrite the whole prompt after every output. Identify the largest defect:
understanding of the task, missing material, format, tone, constraints, or accuracy. Adjust
the factor that explains the defect, then compare the result against a clear case or
criterion.

The initial prompt is a hypothesis: “If I describe the task this way, the output will be suitable.”
After seeing the result, it is not enough to say “I did not like it.” Identify where the gap lies.
Was information used that does not exist? Is the audience wrong? Is the output too long?

Are fields missing? Did an example cause unwanted imitation? Diagnosis turns refinement
from taste into learning.

Use a follow-up prompt to address a specific defect: “Reorganize the memo so that it begins
with the decision, then the evidence, then the risks”, or “Keep the text and change only the

tone.” This is better than “improve it”, because you know what changed and you can
compare the two versions.

For repeated tasks, create evaluation cases that represent reality rather than your best
example. Run the prompt on five to ten cases: short and long, complete and incomplete,

clear and borderline. Use a fixed acceptance list. A prompt may succeed on the case you
designed it around and fail on others, which is a form of overfitting to a single example.

If you change several elements at once, you may get a better result without knowing why.
In simple personal use this matters little, but in an important template you should change
one factor at a time or record the changes. The improvement may come from a new

example, the order of the material, the removal of a conflict, or even a change of model,
rather than from the sentence you added at the end.

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