Few-shot prompting
Also known as: few-shot · shot prompting
Few-shot prompting means including a handful of input→output examples in the prompt so the model imitates the pattern.
Classify sentiment:
"I love this" → positive
"terrible service" → negative
"meh, it was fine" → ???
The model answers “neutral” — it learned the task from the examples, no training needed.
The ROI king: for structured tasks, 2–3 good examples beat a paragraph of instructions. Show, don't tell.