Topic
System Prompts & Role Prompting
4 posts on system prompts & role prompting — part of glossary on the n4n AI blog.
GlossaryDefinition
What is a system prompt? A plain-English explanation
A system prompt explained: what it is, how it shapes model behavior, and how to use it effectively in production LLM applications.
4 min read
GlossaryComparison
System prompt vs user prompt: what's the difference
Understand the practical differences between system prompts and user prompts — when to use each, how they compose, and which patterns scale in production LLM systems.
8 min read
GlossaryHow-to
How to write a system prompt that actually sticks
A practical guide to writing system prompts that survive context pressure, tool calls, and multi-turn drift — with verification steps you can run today.
4 min read
GlossaryGuide
Can users override your system prompt? What to know
A practical guide to system prompt override risks, defense patterns, and what actually works when users try to bypass your instructions.
4 min read
More topics in glossary
- Structured Outputs & JSON Mode19
- AI Agents Fundamentals12
- Hallucination in LLMs11
- Sampling Parameters: Top-p, Top-k & Penalties11
- Context Window & Context Length10
- Fine-Tuning Fundamentals9
- Foundation Models: Base vs Instruct vs Chat9
- Model Families & Naming Conventions: GPT-5, Claude, Gemini 3, Llama 4, Mistral, DeepSeek, Qwen, Grok9
- Grounding & Fact-Checking in AI8
- LLM Benchmarks: MMLU, HumanEval, SWE-bench & GPQA8
- Max Tokens, Stop Sequences & Output Truncation8
- Quantization Formats: GGUF, GPTQ, AWQ & INT4/INT88