---
type: raw-transcript
title: "\"Prompt Engineering\" is a Bunch of BS - Here's the 5% of it to Learn"
youtube_id: XIIIXd5VqO0
url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIIIXd5VqO0
slug: prompt-engineering-is-a-bunch-of-bs-heres-the-5-of-it-to-learn
published: 2024-08-07
duration: "0:04:47"
fetched_at: 2026-07-21
immutable: true
---

## Transcript

**[0:00:00]** all right I want to spend a couple minutes to talk about prompt engineering because people have started to obsess way too much over prompt engineering thinking that it's the most important part about Ai and you can get a job paying you 250,000 $300,000 a year as a prompt engineer when really prompt

**[0:00:15]** engineering is simple it's not worth diving that much into and so I want to cut the fluff out here and talk about what you need to learn for prompt engineering and really just break it down in a simple way and show that is not the most important thing luckily

**[0:00:28]** prompt engineering was bored with fat in 2023 but there are still way too many people that are focusing on it so I want to break that down here and so what I've actually found on the internet is a really really wonderful prompt engineering guide uh it's literally called prompt engineering guide I'll

**[0:00:43]** have a link to it in the description of this video this can be your only resource for learning prompt engineering because in the end there are a few techniques that are really really good to know don't get me wrong prompt engineering is important but most of it is just fluff it's just a bunch of BS

**[0:00:57]** that you don't need to know and so I'd recommend checking out this source and in general just study prompt engineering for like 3 to 5 hours and then go build what you want to build don't spend 20 hours 40 hours 100 hours trying to master all the different techniques and

**[0:01:10]** craft the perfect prompts for every single time you interact with an llm or build an AI agent just keep it simple and so they have a really nice introduction here on prompt engineering and then they go into all the different techniques and you don't even have to learn all these I would just stick to a

**[0:01:24]** few of the basic most important ones and then just run with it the first like six of these techniques here I'd recommend learning like zero shot prompting uh you got few shop prompting Chain of Thought prompting um self-consistency general knowledge prompting and prompt chaining these are all really good and then uh I

**[0:01:40]** would also highly highly recommend learning react prompting because this is the framework that agents use when they reason with themselves as they interact with tools on your behalf and so I would definitely spend some time learning the reason plus act framework for prompt engineering and then also reflection as

**[0:01:58]** well which is self-reflection an AI being able to improve its own response as you can see in this diagram here these two are super important and then the first like six really basic ones those are what you want to focus on this resource also has a lot of cool things

**[0:02:11]** like a prompt Hub which is really sweet they talk about the different models um llm research findings like they have a llm agent section which is really cool I'd recommend reading this I thought it was a really good read um and it even talks about actually the reason plus act

**[0:02:26]** framework like I just said that's like the core of AI agents to reason about oh I need to invoke this tool now I need to take the response and tell it to the user like that is super important that is not fluff with prompt engineering there's some stuff that is key like this

**[0:02:38]** but most of it is just a bunch of BS so take this resource prompt engineering guide run with it and don't waste your time with other things because you learn the basics the most important things with prompt engineering and you're going to be able to do 95 99% of the things

**[0:02:53]** that you're going to want to do with AI especially building things like AI agents you don't have to have all these crazy little hacks and jailbreaks for prompt engineering and so I'll leave you with that and then the only other thing that I wanted to talk about really quick

**[0:03:06]** is a a nice little template that I have for creating more complex prompts and so I've done a little bit of prompt engineering myself just creating prompts through all the different AI agents I developed and I found this framework is really really good for creating nice and concise prompts that clearly Define a

**[0:03:22]** goal for an agent and so basically you just start with a system prompt like this is an example for a task management AI agent so you kind of tell it who the agent is and you give it adjectives to describe it like you are intuitive friendly you are skilled that's what the

**[0:03:37]** system prompt is then you give a goal like your goal is to help the user manage their tasks blah blah blah you kind of just give a few sentences there and then I just list out all the things to do and then all the things not to do

**[0:03:49]** and this is it like it's super super simple and this has worked really really well for me so for any kind of complex prompt I just have four categories I have the system prompt which is who you are the goal and then things to do and things not to do and that works really

**[0:04:02]** really well because anytime I want to fit in something really small or Niche or some sort of hallucination I want to avoid I just have to fit it in the things to do or things not to do super simple structure you can see there's not like overly complex prompt engineering

**[0:04:14]** going into it but this works really well you don't have to over complicate it and that's the whole thing that I'm trying to say here so I hope that this was useful I hope that this is also a funny meme for you and that you can resonate with it seeing all the BS of people

**[0:04:28]** obsessing over prompt Engineering in the world um so yeah if you want to really know how to build real things with AI and not just focus on stupid things like over engineered prompts then subscribe to my channel like this video as well I hope that you enjoyed this and I'll see

**[0:04:43]** you in the next one
