12 prompt patterns that ship better outputs

Patterns are reusable moves you can drop into any prompt. Here are three that pay off immediately.

1 - Output contract

State the exact shape of the answer and what to return when there is no good answer. This is what makes output parseable by the next step instead of something a human cleans up.

Return one line: STATUS=<ok|retry|fail>; NOTE=<reason>.
If you are unsure, use STATUS=retry.

2 - Role priming

A short, specific persona narrows the model range. You are a senior copy editor produces tighter results than no role at all.