Creating Your First AI Prompt: A Simple Guide to Get Started
You’ve heard about ChatGPT, Midjourney, or tools that “create content on their own,” but you’re not quite sure where to start? You’re not alone. Generative AI is everywhere, but it’s still too often seen as a black box reserved for experts.
The good news is, you don’t need to be a machine learning expert to get started. What you need first is to know how to write a good prompt — in other words, to explain to the AI what you expect from it, clearly and effectively.
What you’ll learn here is how to craft your first prompt effectively. We’ll explain what it is, how it works, why it’s important, and above all, how to get started in concrete terms, step by step.
The goal: by the end of this article, you’ll be able to ask your first real question to an AI and get a response that’s clear, relevant, and (almost) mind-blowing.
What’s a Prompt?
A prompt is simply the instruction you give to an artificial intelligence. It’s the message you type to tell it what you expect.
Sounds simple, right? It is — but that’s also what makes the difference between a vague answer… and a highly relevant one.
In practice, a prompt can take many forms:
A simple question: “What are the best design tools in 2025?”
An instruction: “Summarize this article in 5 lines.”
A role to play: “You’re a chef. Suggest a quick vegan recipe.”
A tone or style: “Write this text as if you were Steve Jobs.”
A format constraint: “Create a bullet list with sentences under 10 words.”
What matters isn’t being technical, but being clear, specific, and contextual.
A prompt isn’t a magic command — it’s a brief. And like any good brief, the more effort you put into it, the better the outcome.
That’s why mastering the art of prompting is becoming a valuable skill — sought after by creatives, marketers, product managers, and Tech professionals alike.
How does generative AI work?
When you type a prompt into a generative AI interface, you’re not getting a simple copy-paste answer from the Internet. You’re interacting with a language model trained on billions of texts, capable of producing original, coherent, and structured content in real time.
A technology based on prediction
These language models, called LLMs (Large Language Models), work on a simple principle: predicting the next word in a sentence, then the next, using the full context provided by your prompt and the data they were trained on.
This mechanism relies on billions of parameters and examples, analyzed and weighted to produce the most relevant response possible.
Everything depends on the prompt
What the AI understands, it understands from what you write. The clearer, more precise, and better structured your prompt is, the more relevant the answer will be. Conversely, a vague or poorly targeted prompt often leads to answers that are fuzzy or off-topic.
The “Chain-of-Thought” technique (step-by-step reasoning) improves, for some models, their reasoning capabilities
A good prompt is a good brief
To get quality results, you need to:
State a clear objective (write, explain, summarize, compare, etc.)
Provide minimum context (who is the content for? in what setting?)
Define, if needed, a tone, a role, or an expected format
In short: the more precise your request, the more precise the AI’s response.
And it starts now, with creating your very first prompt.
Create your first prompt step by step
A good prompt isn’t a magic formula. It’s a clearly expressed intention. And the good news: you don’t need to be an expert to write one. You just need to follow a simple logic that you can adapt to any situation.
Here’s a 4-step method to create your first prompt effectively.
1. Start by defining your goal
Ask yourself a simple question: what do you want to achieve?
Do you want to:
generate an idea?
write a text?
explain a concept?
summarize content?
compare two elements?
The clearer your goal, the easier it will be for the AI to understand your request.
2. Provide context
The AI doesn’t “know” you. If you want it to respond accurately, give it some information about:
the target audience (e.g., “for a beginner student”)
the expected format (e.g., “in 5 lines”, “in bullet points”)
the desired tone (e.g., “professional”, “inspiring”, “educational”)
🧠 A Stanford University report highlights that providing clear context and format helps guide AI responses more reliably.
3. Structure your instruction
You can use this simple formula:
[Your role] + [Expected action] + [Context] + [Format]
You are a Tech recruiter. Give me 5 tips to improve my junior developer resume, in list format, with a direct tone.
This prompt is clear, precise, and actionable. The AI understands what you expect, the role it should take, and how to format the answer.
4. Test and adjust
Even with a good prompt, it’s rare to get exactly what you want on the first try. Don’t hesitate to:
rephrase certain parts
clarify what’s missing
request a different format
Interaction with AI is a collaboration. The more you fine-tune your prompt, the closer the result will get to your original intention.
Common mistakes to avoid
Creating a good prompt takes practice. And like any skill, there are a few classic traps to avoid — especially when you’re just starting out.
Here are the most common ones, and how to easily avoid them.
1. Being too vague
“Write me a summary.”
But of what? For whom? How long? In what tone?
A vague prompt always leads to a vague answer. Always. Take 10 seconds to specify what you want — even briefly.
2. Forgetting the context
The AI can’t read your mind. It doesn’t know who you’re addressing or in what situation you’re asking your question. Without that information, it’ll play it safe… and often miss the mark.
Always add one or two hints: “beginner audience,” “resume for an internship,” “text for an oral presentation,” etc.
3. Neglecting the format
Do you want a list? A short paragraph? A data-backed example? Say it.
A generative AI can produce text in almost any style or structure — as long as you specify it.
4. Expecting everything from a single prompt
A prompt isn’t fixed. It’s meant to be tested, refined, and improved.
If the answer doesn’t fit, go back to it: add a detail, tweak the wording, or refocus your goal.
Creating a good prompt also means interacting with the tool, not just sending a command.
Now that you know how to avoid the common pitfalls, it’s time to understand who you’re talking to. Let’s take a quick look at the most popular AIs today.
A few text-generation AIs you should know
Even if you don’t need to master them all, here are the language models you’ll most often come across in professional or personal use:
GPT (developed by OpenAI) – used in many tools across the market
Claude (Anthropic) – known for its long, well-structured answers
Gemini (Google) – integrated into Google’s ecosystem, ideal for productivity tasks
Mistral – open-source and European, increasingly popular in the Tech ecosystem
LLaMA (Meta) – serves as the foundation for many internal or custom projects
Cohere– often integrated into enterprise solutions
All of them work on the same principle: they interpret your prompt to generate a coherent response.
That’s why learning to brief them properly makes all the difference.
Ready to take it further?
Writing a prompt is more than just an exercise — it’s a skill.
And in a world where AI is becoming part of everything — from marketing to development, from writing to design — knowing how to communicate effectively with an AI is a true professional advantage.
At Ironhack, we believe these skills should be accessible, structured, and focused on real-world applications.
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