The Truth About AI Prompt Templates: How Much Do They Really Matter?
Transcend template use with the Shu Ha Ri framework.
Here's a question I often get: "How important are prompt templates when working with an AI tool?" People see the ones I use and assume the magic is in their intricacy — spoiler alert: it's not.
Intelligence > templates
The intelligence of the model you use is the most critical factor determining the quality of your output.
As AI models evolve — from GPT-3 to GPT-4 and now Claude 3 Opus 1 — the importance of prompt templates decreases. 2 These more advanced models better understand context and intent, resulting in higher-quality outputs, even with less-than-perfect prompts.
Prompt templates are a crutch for context
Besides the model's intelligence, the amount of context you provide your AI tool matters for getting good results.
For example, if you only tell the AI to "write a blog post on x" or "develop a business strategy for My Company," it's not going to come up with anything good. 3 That’s where prompt templates come in: they ensure you provide all the necessary information for getting great output — especially important when you're new to AI and prompting.
Apply the Shu Ha Ri framework to your template use
Think of templates the same way martial arts and agile teams think about a practitioner's journey, what they call Shu Ha Ri (which roughly translates to "obey, detach, and transcend"):
Shu (守): At this stage, you follow the teachings and rules rigidly. Focus on how to do tasks as they were taught, without deviation.
Ha (破): Once you master the basic practices, you begin to experiment. At this stage, you can innovate and adapt techniques to different situations. You understand the principles behind the rules well enough to start questioning them and trying out new things.
Ri (離): In the final stage, you transcend the rules; you've internalized them. You can adapt or discard them based on your deeper, intuitive understanding of your practice.
You should view AI prompt templates through this lens: if you're a beginner, follow them rigidly. If you're an AI master, use, adapt, or discard them as you see fit.
💡 Want to explore AI for personal productivity further? Book a free 15-minute session with me, and I'll guide you through getting started with AI models like ChatGPT or Claude. We can also tackle a specific task on your to-do list with AI. Grab a slot on my calendar here.
Let templates teach you
Don't get too hung up on finding or crafting the perfect prompt templates. See them as teachers teaching you how to communicate with AI: the language to use, what information to include, and how and when to break assignments into multiple prompts.
As you get more comfortable, you start modifying templates to see how the outputs change. Eventually, you reach the Ri stage. You'll switch naturally between creating your own templates, adapting ones from others, and just conversing with the AI.
Enjoy the journey, and see you next time!
Tim
I'm talking about everyday prompting here, where you use AI tools for your personal productivity, creativity, and life. There are use cases where prompt templates matter a lot more.
For example, specific and intricate prompts are critical when you want to maintain brand consistency across your organization in customer service responses, or when you run prompts in the background to execute actions in your app or other automated processes.
AI models are not so different from humans, it turns out; you get better results with people, too, if you give them more context about an assignment.