Prompt Engineering

A practical guide to designing, structuring, and optimising prompts that generate high-quality regulatory content in your firm’s writing style.

1. Designing Reliable, Reusable Prompts

A modular approach to prompt design improves instruction-following and lets you reuse common elements across your workspaces.

Recommended prompt elements:

Element	Reusable?
Instruction (role, task, audience, objective)	Sometimes
Style Guide	Yes
Output Structure	Sometimes
Context Delimiter	Yes

Before deploying a prompt, check that you have removed any contradictory or vague instructions. See Section 5 for prompt optimisation tools.

1.1 Instruction

Begin the prompt by describing the AI model’s role, task, audience, and objective.

Your task is to summarise the regulatory updates from the context below. The summary should contain any key details a general counsel of a business would need to know.

1.2 Format the Prompt with Tags

Separate the Style Guide from the Output Structure with clear tags and instruct the AI model to follow both.

In writing the summary, it is of utmost importance that you follow a strict format. You must follow both the Style Guide and Output Structure exactly.

<STYLE_GUIDE>
[Insert your firm's writing style requirements here]
</STYLE_GUIDE>

<OUTPUT_STRUCTURE>
[Insert response structure for your use case here]
</OUTPUT_STRUCTURE>

1.3 Style Guide

The Style Guide is boilerplate that can be reused across prompts. The purpose of it is to describe the writing style requirements of your firm. Example you can adapt:

<STYLE_GUIDE>
Write your answer in British English. Any text that is in a language other than English must be translated into English, including the title of the update. Please use abbreviations or acronyms for regulatory bodies or courts. Aim for clarity, neutrality and precision in your language. Please remove any politically charged statements. Your answer should NEVER include any statement that pushes a political view. 

Refer to ministers and government officials by their title, rather than their name. Do not use synonyms for terms or phrases with legal meaning. Write in a concise tone, using an active voice and plain English. Do not write a conclusion. Do not state the word count. Write using full sentences in grammatically correct form.

Please format all titles and subtitles using inline CSS `color: rgb(221, 30, 55);`.

Please only state dates using the format ‘# Month YYYY’ (e.g. ‘0 Month 0000’).

Do not use any “label: text” constructions in bullet points, sentences, paragraphs, or to begin a list. Always write in full sentences without colons acting as dividers, and do not use colon-introduced lists.

Do not use em dashes.

Please follow the above Style Guide as closely as possible.
</STYLE_GUIDE>

1.4 Output Structure

The Output Structure instructs the AI model on how to produce the response for your use case. If prescriptive text formatting is required, it helps to describe the requirements step-by-step using a numbered list. Example you can adapt:

<OUTPUT_STRUCTURE>
Your summary should be kept within a {Length}-word limit. Please include each of the following elements in your response:

1. Title

Use markdown’s H1 format (`# `). The title must be the translated title of the update in British English. The title should describe the action as a present tense, point-in-time statement, e.g., “[Authority] releases [Report/Guideline/etc.].”

2. Date statement

The first line after the title should include the date of the action, in the format: “On # Month 0000, ...”. If the date is not specified, omit this line and start the summary directly after the title. The date must be bolded using markdown formatting (`**`).

3. First paragraph

In the same first paragraph as the date, identify the source/authority issuing the action and the subject matter. If possible, include an inline markdown link (`[label](link)`) to the most authoritative source at the point where the document type (e.g., report, guidance, consultation paper) is first mentioned.

Summarise the main action, relevant details, and potential implications. Do not speculate beyond the provided context.

4. Subsequent paragraphs (up to 3)

Each subsequent paragraph should summarise a key aspect, implication, or next step arising from the update. Avoid colons at the beginning of paragraphs.

Ensure the total number of paragraphs (including the first paragraph) is between two and four paragraphs, excluding the title.
</OUTPUT_STRUCTURE>

1.5 Context Delimiter

Graceview appends the original source text to your prompt. Please end your prompt with a clear delimiter:

Relevant context:

2. Markdown Formatting in Graceview

2.1 Graceview Editor

The Graceview editor uses markdown to interpret text formatting received from AI models. To generate content with specific formatting requirements, instruct the AI model to use markdown where needed and include the exact markdown symbols in your prompt.

For example, if you would like to generate a Heading 1 level title, include this in your prompt:

Please format the title using markdown's first heading level (`# `).

Titles, Lists, and Block Quotes

Please note that a space is required after the markdown symbols for titles, lists and block quotes.

• Correct Heading 1: `# `

• Incorrect Heading 1: `#`

2.2 Markdown Reference

Formatting	Markdown	Example
Heading 1	#	# SEC Announces Agenda and Panelists for Roundtable on Trade-Through Prohibitions
Heading 2	##	## Background Facts
Heading 3	###	### Agenda Highlights
Bold	**	**7 May 2025**
Italics	*	*proposed rule*
Underline	_	_Key Dates_
Strikethrough	~~	~~Retired 2014 guidance~~
Block Quote	>	> Panelists will address market transparency and investor outcomes
Bullet List	*	* Panel topics include market data and order routing
Numbered List	1.	1. Review release
Hyperlink	[Label](link)	[Press Release](https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025-109-sec-announces-agenda-panelists-roundtable-trade-through-prohibitions)

2.3 Colour Styling

If you require colour, instruct the AI model to emit inline CSS by inserting the following into your prompt:

Please use inline CSS `color: [Insert your preferred colour code]`.

If, for example, you wanted to have a specific green paragraph of text, you might prompt the AI model like this:

When writing this paragraph, please format it using inline CSS `color: rgb(0, 169, 71);`.

Or, if you wanted all titles to be red, you might add the following into your prompt:

Please format all titles and subtitles using inline CSS `color: rgb(221, 30, 55);`.

Graceview Colour Codes

Colour	Colour Code
Black	No colour
Grey	rgb(113, 113, 122);
Orange	rgb(229, 129, 12);
Yellow	rgb(229, 187, 12);
Green	rgb(0, 169, 71);
Blue	rgb(42, 89, 243);
Purple	rgb(118, 61, 255);
Red	rgb(221, 30, 55);

3. Prompt Variables

You may specify variables to allow tweaks to be made by users from within the Graceview editor. You can do this by surrounding a variable name with braces: {VariableName}. Ensure you have set up the variable name in the prompt editor with labels for each preset value.

Example Variable: Length

This is an example of a variable to set the length of the summary. This would allow users to select between a Short, Medium and Long sized summary when generating a response.

Variable	Value Title	Value
Length	Short	50 words
	Medium	100 words
	Long	200 words

Usage Within Prompt

Please write a summary of the update provided, keeping within {Length}.

4. Example Prompt

Below is an example prompt putting all of the above concepts into practice.

Your task is to summarise the regulatory updates from the context below. The summary should contain any key details a general counsel of a business would need to know.

In writing the summary, it is of utmost importance that you follow a strict format. You must follow both the Style Guide and Output Structure exactly.

<STYLE_GUIDE>
Write your answer in British English. Any text that is in a language other than English must be translated into English, including the title of the update. Please use abbreviations or acronyms for regulatory bodies or courts. Aim for clarity, neutrality and precision in your language. Please remove any politically charged statements. Your answer should NEVER include any statement that pushes a political view. 

Refer to ministers and government officials by their title, rather than their name. Do not use synonyms for terms or phrases with legal meaning. Write in a concise tone, using an active voice and plain English. Do not write a conclusion. Do not state the word count. Write using full sentences in grammatically correct form.

Please format all titles and subtitles using inline CSS `color: rgb(221, 30, 55);`.

Please only state dates using the format ‘# Month YYYY’ (e.g. ‘0 Month 0000’).

Do not use any “label: text” constructions in bullet points, sentences, paragraphs, or to begin a list. Always write in full sentences without colons acting as dividers, and do not use colon-introduced lists.

Do not use em dashes.

Please follow the above Style Guide as closely as possible.
</STYLE_GUIDE>

<OUTPUT_STRUCTURE>
Your summary should be kept within a {Length}-word limit. Please include each of the following elements in your response:

1. Title

Use markdown’s H1 format (`# `). The title must be the translated title of the update in British English. The title should describe the action as a present tense, point-in-time statement, e.g., “[Authority] releases [Report/Guideline/etc.].”

2. Date statement

The first line after the title should include the date of the action, in the format: “On # Month 0000, ...”. If the date is not specified, omit this line and start the summary directly after the title. The date must be bolded using markdown formatting (`**`).

3. First paragraph

In the same first paragraph as the date, identify the source/authority issuing the action and the subject matter. If possible, include an inline markdown link (`[label](link)`) to the most authoritative source at the point where the document type (e.g., report, guidance, consultation paper) is first mentioned.

Summarise the main action, relevant details, and potential implications. Do not speculate beyond the provided context.

4. Subsequent paragraphs (up to 3)

Each subsequent paragraph should summarise a key aspect, implication, or next step arising from the update. Avoid colons at the beginning of paragraphs.

Ensure the total number of paragraphs (including the first paragraph) is between two and four paragraphs, excluding the title.
</OUTPUT_STRUCTURE>

Relevant context:

5. Useful Resources

Both Anthropic and OpenAI provide easy-to-use prompt optimisers, as part of each model provider's prompt builder. Each optimiser requires sign-in to access, however Anthropic's optimiser also requires purchasing credits prior to use.

These optimisers are particularly useful for rooting out any contradictory statements which are present in your prompt. Contradictions greatly decrease the quality of content output.

• OpenAI's Prompt Optimizer.

• Anthropic's Prompt Improver.