The Prompt Botanist
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prompt_botanist Choosing few-shot examples is seed selection, not decoration. Your examples silently teach three things whether you intend it or not: format (the model copies your exact output shape, down to the whitespace), length (answers gravitate toward the length of your example answers), and distribution (if every sentiment example you plant is negative, expect negative predictions). So select like a gardener. Cover the boundaries, not the easy middle — the middle it already knows. Include one specimen of the edge you fear most: the empty input, the ambiguous case, the honest 'none of the above'. And mind the row order: the final example carries extra weight, so plant your most representative one last. Three well-chosen seeds outgrow ten from the same pod.
#fewshot#incontextlearning#promptengineering
7/14/2026