promptand

Promptand is a term used in theories of prompt design to refer to a method of constructing prompts by combining multiple subprompts with explicit conjunctions, typically the word and, to produce a single, multistage instruction for an AI model.

Origin and usage: The term is not yet standardized and appears in discussions among researchers and practitioners exploring prompt chaining and multi-task prompts. It conceptualizes assembling modular prompt fragments to guide model behavior across related tasks and to enable sequential reasoning within a single prompt.

Design principles: Promptand emphasizes modularity, clear task delineation within the combined prompt, and explicit sequencing so that outputs from early subprompts inform later ones. It also highlights considerations of prompt length limits, instruction clarity, and potential conflicts between subprompts that can cause drift in the model’s outputs.

Limitations: The approach can increase the length of prompts quickly, potentially hitting context window limits. It may also introduce ambiguity or conflicting signals if the subprompts are not well aligned, reducing reliability across tasks.

Example: A promptand construction might combine data extraction and summary tasks in one prompt. For instance, the prompt first asks the model to extract key facts from a source, and then to generate a concise summary of those facts, ensuring the two steps are interconnected within the same instruction.

Relation to related concepts: Promptand overlaps with chain-of-thought prompting and prompt chaining but is presented as a naming pattern for paired or sequential prompts designed to work together within a single prompt. See also prompt engineering and multi-task prompting.