Few-Shot Prompting

Definition

Few-shot prompting means providing examples in the prompt so that a model can understand the expected task or response format.

Instead of simply sending “Where is my parcel?”, a system can provide examples showing how similar customer questions should be answered. These examples give the model additional context at inference time.

The important distinction is that few-shot prompting does not require retraining the model. The examples are supplied as part of the request itself.