Lab: Full Technique Synthesis

This is a dress rehearsal for Week 2. Pick a real component to build, stack your prompts, iterate, and place the result on an actual page.

The target: one complete, styled section, placed in a working HTML file, using at least four of the five techniques.

Before you open the model

Write a short plan first. Three questions:

  1. What am I building?
  2. What style constraints should I give the model? Can I paste existing CSS as a few-shot example?
  3. What's complex enough about this component that chain-of-thought would help?

A clear plan leads to a better first prompt. This is the CoT technique applied to yourself.

If you've been thinking about your Week 2 hackathon project, you can build a component for that instead of your About Me page. The practice is the same.

Round 1: first prompt (20 min)

Write and run your stacked prompt. Include at least four techniques.

Paste the output into VS Code, open it in the browser, and evaluate. On your worksheet, write:

  • Two things the model got right
  • One thing that needs correction

Round 2: iterate (20 min)

Write a follow-up prompt based on the evaluation. Common corrections to make:

  • A missing constraint: "the button should match my existing .btn class"
  • A wrong element: "use <section> not <div>"
  • A style mismatch: "the card titles should use my heading font"

Run the second prompt and integrate the result into your page. If you finish early, try building the same component with your backup model and compare the outputs.

Peer gallery

Leave your page open and walk the room. If you see something that worked well (a prompt strategy, a component structure, a style choice), say something.

The interesting thing to look for: how different teams' prompts produced components that look and feel like they belong on their specific pages, not like generic AI output. That's the few-shot and structured output techniques doing their job.

Come in tomorrow knowing what you want to build. Day 5 is team formation and project scoping, the first time you'll plan something as a group rather than as an individual.