Glossary

Short definitions for prompt-engineering terms — with examples and links to the editor.

What is an agent instruction?
An agent instruction is structured text that defines how an AI agent behaves — role, rules, tools, and output format.
What is a system prompt?
A system prompt sets persistent behavior for ChatGPT, Claude, and API agents — tone, rules, and response format.
What is a RAG document?
RAG documents are knowledge-base texts chunked and embedded for retrieval-augmented generation in AI apps.
What is a cognitive influence map?
A cognitive influence map shows how prompt sections depend on each other — also called a prompt dependency graph.
What is a token budget?
Token budget is the maximum context your prompt can use — critical when combining system prompts, tools, and RAG retrieval.
What is a prompt template?
Prompt templates are reusable section layouts for agent instructions — role, rules, context, and output blocks.