📖 Glossary
Prompt
The text input given to an AI model to elicit a desired response
System Prompt
Instructions defining the AI's role, constraints, and output format for a session
Zero-Shot Prompting
Asking the model to perform a task with no examples provided
Few-Shot Prompting
Including 2-5 input/output examples in the prompt to guide the model
Chain-of-Thought (CoT)
Asking the model to "think step by step" before giving a final answer
Role Prompting
Assigning the AI a persona to shape responses (e.g. "You are a senior Java architect")
Temperature
Sampling parameter (0-1); 0 = deterministic, 1 = creative/random
Token
The unit of text the model processes; roughly 0.75 words on average in English
Context Window
Maximum tokens the model can process at once (prompt + response combined)
Hallucination
When a model generates plausible-sounding but factually incorrect output
Grounding
Technique of providing source documents so the model answers from them, not memory
Output Format Specification
Prompt instruction telling the model exactly what shape to return (JSON, table, list)
Prompt Chaining
Breaking a complex task into sequential prompts where output of one feeds the next
Meta-Prompt
A prompt instructing the AI to generate or improve another prompt
Multimodal
Capability to process mixed input types (text + image + code) in one prompt
RCTF Framework
Role, Context, Task, Format — the four-pillar framework for structuring any prompt to maximize clarity and output quality
DHF Pattern
Diagnose, Hypothesize, Fix — structured debugging approach where you guide AI through systematic root-cause analysis
STAR Framework
Scope, Task, Approach, Result — framework for composing multi-step agent prompts with clear boundaries and deliverables
Context File
A project-level file (CLAUDE.md, gemini.md) that provides persistent context to AI tools across sessions
Docstring-First
Writing the function specification (signature, params, return type, docstring) before asking AI to implement the body
Self-Critique
Asking AI to review its own output from multiple expert perspectives to catch errors before accepting
UCC Filing
Uniform Commercial Code filing that creates a public record of a security interest in personal-property collateral
Debtor Name Normalization
Standardizing entity names per UCC §9-503 rules (e.g., stripping suffixes, uppercasing) for consistent matching