Prompting that works on small local models
Why small models need different prompting: explicit structure, few-shot examples, constraints, decomposition, output formats and grammars, temperature settings, chat-template correctness, and a test-driven process for improving prompts.
14 min·Verified 2026-11Pro+50 XP
Frontier models forgive vague prompts. Small local models (1 to 13B) are less forgiving, but they can be excellent at narrow tasks when you give them structure.
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