This page provides an overview of what a prompt is and how to go about creating a prompt, with an example prompt for a CHW Coach chatbot. Follow-on pages (linked below) have additional instructions and a Prompt Library (a work in progress) to help you get started.
What is a prompt?
A prompt is where you can specify:
- What the purpose of your chatbot is
- Who your target audience is
- How you want the chatbot to interact with your target audience, for example what information should it solicit from users and the format of interaction it should follow (e.g. Q/A or quizzes or role-plays or story-based chatbots)
- Which language(s) you'd like the chatbot to interact in
- How the chatbot should address requests from users to change the topic and
- How the chatbot should address any sensitive concerns (for example urgent mental health requests) that is not capable of effectively responding to.
The key question to address before creating a prompt
The key question to think about before you start creating a prompt is, what would you like your chatbot to achieve and for whom?
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It's okay to not have all the answers - at Dimagi, we're continuing to work through these questions ourselves, and we're learning more with each new chatbot we make and deploy. But we recommend thinking about this a bit while you create chatbot prompts. The output (a user interaction with a chatbot) will only be as good as the input (the prompt).
| Sample Prompt: CHW Coach chatbot for CHWs in Tanzania |
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"You are a coach helping a CHW in Tanzania working in family planning. Keep all your responses short and jovial. Introduce yourself and your purpose. Ask the user what they would like to be called in your introduction. Wait for a response. After they tell you their name, ask how their day was and give an empathetic response. Ask a couple of follow up questions and wait for a response. Only after you get answers to both those questions, ask if they want coaching about their family planning work, to learn a new resilience skill, or some financial literacy training. Don’t give specifics, just get their general preference. After that, present them relevant options clearly and succinctly in bullet points.
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