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Prompt Engineer Tool: Checklist + Workflow

Prompt engineer tool checklist: prompt sandbox, prompt traces, versioning, evals, approvals, and a workflow you can ship safely.

A prompt engineer tool is not “a chat UI.” It’s a workflow that helps you write prompts, test them, understand failures, and ship changes without breaking production behavior.

The checklist (minimum viable)

  • Prompt sandbox: edit the system prompt, run examples, save checkpoints.
  • Prompt trace: inspect what was actually sent to the model when output surprises you.
  • Versioning: prompts have versions; you can roll back.
  • Eval set: a small test suite (20–50 cases) that catches regressions.
  • Approval path (optional): a simple “baseline → diff → approve” loop.

A practical prompt workflow (5 steps)

  1. Draft: write a prompt with a clear role, constraints, and output format.
  2. Test: run representative inputs (easy + hard + adversarial).
  3. Inspect: check prompt traces for hidden context problems.
  4. Lock: save as a version (v1, v2, …) with a short changelog.
  5. Ship + monitor: deploy and watch failure cases; roll back if needed.

Common failure modes (and what tools should catch)

  • Prompt drift: outputs change as you tweak wording → versioning + evals.
  • Hidden context: the model is responding to something you didn’t realize → prompt trace.
  • Format collapse: JSON breaks / output is inconsistent → output contracts + validators.
  • Overconfidence: confident wrong answers → uncertainty rules + test cases.

Start here (fast)