Show, Don't Tell: Few-Shot Examples

steering tone with example reply pairs

Part of: Smart Reply Generator

Describing your tone in rules gets you close. The most direct way to make the model write like you is to show it you writing: a couple of real (incoming message, your reply) pairs. This is few-shot prompting , and it is the biggest quality jump in this product. What few-shot means Zero-shot is asking with instructions only. Few-shot is asking with a handful of worked examples first, so the model pattern-matches off your actual replies instead of its own defaults. You express the examples as prior user/assistant turns: the incoming message as a user turn, your real reply as the assistant turn. Then you append the new incoming message as the final user turn. The model reads two rounds where "you" answered short, warm, and exclamation-friendly, then sees the new question and continues the pattern. It is imitation, not instruction, and imitation is what tone actually is. Why this beats a longer rulebook You could write a paragraph describing your voice, but the model still has to interpret it. An example removes the interpretation. It shows the target output directly: shape, length, warmth. Two good examples usually outperform ten lines of rules. It also composes with the tone profile

Challenge: Assemble the Few-Shot Prompt