Prompt Engineering and LLM Application Development
Chapter 1: Foundations of Prompt Engineering
Introduction to Large Language Models
What is Prompt Engineering?
Components of a Prompt
Basic Prompting Techniques
Understanding LLM Temperature and Other Parameters
Hands-on practical: Simple Prompt Experiments
Quiz for Chapter 1
Chapter 2: Advanced Prompting Strategies
Zero-Shot Prompting
Few-Shot Prompting
Instruction Following Prompts
Role Prompting
Structuring Output Formats (JSON, Markdown)
Chain-of-Thought Prompting
Self-Consistency Prompting
Practice: Applying Advanced Techniques
Quiz for Chapter 2
Chapter 3: Prompt Design, Iteration, and Evaluation
Principles of Effective Prompt Design
Managing Prompt Length and Context Windows
Iterative Prompt Refinement
Evaluating Prompt Performance
Automated Prompt Testing Approaches
Version Control for Prompts
Hands-on practical: Prompt Optimization Challenge
Quiz for Chapter 3
Chapter 4: Interacting with LLM APIs
Overview of Common LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.)
API Authentication and Security
Making API Requests with Python
Understanding API Request Parameters
Processing API Responses
Handling API Errors and Rate Limits
Streaming Responses
Hands-on practical: Build a Simple Q&A Bot
Quiz for Chapter 4
Chapter 5: Building Applications with LLM Frameworks
Introduction to LLM Frameworks (e.g., LangChain)
Core Components: Models, Prompts, Parsers
Understanding Chains
Managing Memory in LLM Applications
Introduction to Agents
Using Tools with Agents
Hands-on practical: Develop an Agentic Application
Quiz for Chapter 5
Chapter 6: Integrating LLMs with External Data (RAG)
Limitations of Standard LLM Knowledge
Introduction to Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)
Document Loading and Splitting
Text Embedding Models
Introduction to Vector Stores
Implementing Semantic Search/Retrieval
Combining Retrieved Context with Prompts
Basic RAG Pipeline Implementation
Hands-on practical: Build a RAG Q&A System for Documents
Quiz for Chapter 6
Chapter 7: Output Parsing, Validation, and Application Reliability
Challenges with LLM Output Consistency
Prompting for Structured Data (Revisited)
Using Output Parsers
Data Validation Techniques (e.g., Pydantic)
Handling Parsing Errors
Implementing Retry Mechanisms
Moderation and Content Filtering APIs
Practice: Implementing Strong Output Handling
Quiz for Chapter 7
Chapter 8: Application Development Considerations
Structuring LLM Application Code
Managing API Keys and Secrets
Cost Estimation and Monitoring
Basic Caching Strategies
Testing LLM Applications
Simple Deployment Options (Serverless, Containers)
Hands-on practical: Containerizing a Simple LLM App
Quiz for Chapter 8
Managing Memory in LLM Applications
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- Memory, LangChain, 2025 (LangChain Inc.) - The official documentation for LangChain's memory modules, providing implementation details, examples, and descriptions of various memory types discussed in the section.
- Building Applications with GPT-4 and ChatGPT, Ben Forta, 2023 (O'Reilly Media) - Offers practical guidance on developing LLM-powered applications, including strategies for managing conversational context and state, which encompasses memory management.
- A Survey on Dialogue Systems: Recent Advances and New Challenges, Ruihong Zhao, Kai Zheng, Yan Liu, Yuchuan Luo, Yanchun Zhao, and Philip S. Yu, 2021 IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, Vol. 33 (IEEE) DOI: 10.1109/TKDE.2019.2945722 - Provides an academic overview of dialogue systems, their components, and the historical and ongoing challenges of managing dialogue state and context, which forms the theoretical basis for memory in LLM applications.
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Large Language Models: A Survey, Yunfan Gao, Yun Xiong, Xinyu Gao, Kangxiang Jia, Jinliu Pan, Yuxi Bi, Yi Dai, Jiawei Sun, Meng Wang, Haofen Wang, 2023 arXiv DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2312.10997 - Surveys techniques for extending LLM context and knowledge, which addresses the limitations of direct context window and the need for mechanisms like summarization or external memory retrieval to manage conversation history.