prompt
The instructions and text you give an AI model to get the answer you want.
A prompt is everything the model receives before it answers: your question, any instructions, and any text you paste in. The model has no other context, so the prompt shapes the result. Clear prompts that state the task, the audience and the format usually get far better answers than short, vague ones.
Think of it as
Like a brief to a new freelancer. "Write something about our product" gets a guess, while a clear brief with audience, length and tone gets what you need.
Example
"Summarise this" gives a generic paragraph. "Summarise this contract in five bullet points for a sales manager, flagging any payment deadlines" gives a summary that manager can act on straight away.