AI Dictionary › Prompting

One-shot

One-shot prompting is the middle ground between zero-shot and few-shot: you provide the model with a single example of desired input and output before the actual task. One well-chosen example is often enough to convey the expected format, tone and level of detail.

Definition

When to use it: the output format is distinctive but not complex, the required style is specific (a complaint response "in your company's voice"), or the model systematically misreads the request in zero-shot. Compared to few-shot, it saves tokens and preparation time.

The zero/one/few-shot choice is a prompt engineer's call: more examples give more control but consume context. The practical rule: start with zero-shot, add one example if the result disappoints, move up to few-shot only if it's truly needed.

Related terms

• Zero-shot
• Few-shot
• Prompting
• Prompt Engineering
• Context Window

More in Prompting

• Prompt
• Prompting
• Role Assignment
• Zero-shot
• Few-shot
• Chain of Thought
• Prompt Engineering
• Output Format

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