Glossary

System prompt — Glossary

Developer- or product-level instructions that set role, style, and policy before user messages.

Reviewed:

Full definition

System prompts steer assistants across sessions: persona, formatting rules, escalation policy, and tool usage guidelines. They should be versioned like code and kept free of secrets.

Users and retrieved documents may attempt to override them via prompt injection; architectural controls remain necessary.

Related encyclopedia topic

System Prompts — System prompts are higher-priority instructions that set an AI assistant’s role, style, tool policies, and safety constraints for a session or application.

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