Free Prompt Engineering Course for Beginners
From beginner to expert, learn how to craft powerful prompts that unlock the full potential of AI language models.
🧙♂️ What is Prompt Engineering?
Learn the fundamentals of prompt engineering and why it's a crucial skill in the age of AI.
🧠 Core Concepts
Prompt engineering is the practice of developing and optimizing prompts to efficiently use language models (LMs) for a variety of applications.
[Context] Provide background information
[Input Data] The actual input to process
[Output Indicator] How the output should be formatted
💡 Why It Matters
- Helps test and evaluate the limitations of LLMs
- Enables innovative applications on top of LLMs
- Critical for research and AI advancements
- High demand for prompt engineering skills (e.g., jobs paying $250k+)
✍️ Your First Prompt
Create a simple prompt that asks an AI to explain why the sky is blue in one sentence.
Start with clear, specific instructions. The more precise your prompt, the better the AI can understand and fulfill your request.
🎭 Roles & Personas
Learn how to assign roles and personas to guide the AI's responses.
👔 Using Roles
By assigning a role to the AI, you can shape its responses to match specific expertise or communication styles.
🎭 Personas & Tone
You can also define the tone and personality of the responses by specifying a persona.
✍️ Create a Role-Based Prompt
Create a prompt that asks the AI to respond as a specific professional.
✏️ Instruction Clarity
Learn how to craft clear, unambiguous instructions for optimal results.
🎯 Precision Matters
Vague instructions lead to vague responses. Be specific about what you want.
Strong: "Provide a 100-word overview of the evolutionary history of domestic dogs, focusing on their divergence from wolves."
🔍 Scope Control
Define the scope of your request to prevent overly broad or narrow responses.
✍️ Improve This Prompt
Rewrite the following prompt to make it more specific and clear.
📊 Formatting Output
Learn how to specify output formats like tables, JSON, and bullet points.
📋 Common Formats
You can request specific formats to make the output more usable for your needs.
🔣 Structured Data
For technical applications, you can request structured data formats.
✍️ Format Your Output
Create a prompt that requests information in a specific format.
🎨 Controlling Tone & Emotion
Learn how to adjust the tone and emotional quality of AI responses.
😊 Tone Variations
You can specify the tone you want the AI to use in its responses.
"Describe the water cycle using a dramatic, poetic tone."
"Provide a concise, professional summary of blockchain technology."
🎭 Emotional Context
For certain applications, you might want to specify an emotional context.
"Create an enthusiastic product description for a new smartphone."
"Draft a serious warning about climate change consequences."
✍️ Set the Tone
Create a prompt that specifies both the content and the desired tone.
🚧 Writing Constraints
Learn how to set limits and constraints to focus the AI's responses.
📏 Length Constraints
You can control the length of the response with word or character limits.
"Explain photosynthesis in 3 sentences."
"Describe the Eiffel Tower in under 100 characters."
🚫 Content Constraints
You can specify what to include or exclude from the response.
"Describe Paris focusing only on its cultural aspects, not geography."
"Explain how a car engine works using only simple words (no technical jargon)."
✍️ Add Constraints
Take this basic prompt and add specific constraints to focus the response.
🔢 Step-by-Step Prompts
Learn how to break down complex tasks into step-by-step instructions.
⛓️ Chain-of-Thought
Encourage the AI to show its reasoning process step by step.
Solve by breaking the problem into steps. First, identify the odd numbers, add them, and indicate whether the result is odd or even."
🤔 Zero-Shot CoT
Simply adding "Let's think step by step" can significantly improve reasoning.
✍️ Create a Step-by-Step Prompt
Transform this math problem into a step-by-step reasoning prompt.
🐛 Debugging Weak Prompts
Learn how to identify and fix common prompt problems.
🔍 Common Issues
Recognize signs that your prompt needs improvement:
- Vague or overly broad responses
- AI misunderstanding your intent
- Responses that are too verbose or too brief
- AI making assumptions you didn't want
- Responses that ignore parts of your prompt
🔧 Fixing Strategies
Techniques to improve weak prompts:
Strong: "Provide a 150-word overview of Rome's historical significance focusing on its role in the Roman Empire, with 3 key points about its cultural legacy."
✍️ Debug This Prompt
Improve the following problematic prompt:
📝 Final Quiz
Test your prompt engineering knowledge with this comprehensive quiz.
1. What's the most important element in a prompt?
2. How can you get more concise responses?
3. What does "role prompting" achieve?
4. How do you get structured data (like JSON)?
5. What does "chain-of-thought" prompting do?
Congratulations! You've Completed the Course
You've mastered the essential skills of prompt engineering. Keep practicing to become an expert!
Why Learn with Prompt99?
✅ 100% Free forever
✅ No sign-up required
✅ Interactive, fun, and simplified lessons
✅ 80+ free AI prompt generator tools included
✅ Practice quizzes to test your skills
✅ Perfect stepping stone to advanced AI work
Frequently Asked Questions
Explore questions related to this tool.
Yes, absolutely. There’s no hidden cost, no trial period, and no signup required. It’s our contribution to spreading prompt literacy to everyone, globally.
Nope! This course is designed for complete beginners. Whether you’re a student, creator, freelancer, or just curious, you’ll find it simple, clear, and useful.
Most learners complete it in 30–15 minutes. You can go at your own pace — pause, revisit, or skip ahead anytime.
Definitely. Every module is paired with links to Prompt99’s 80+ prompt generator tools so you can immediately apply what you learn.