Fix wrong-format answers with two or three few-shot examples

Every answer comes back shaped differently, so you can never paste it straight into your report.

Beginner to intermediateRead 5 minDoing: about 30 minutes6 steps

▶ Start

What you'll have at the end

A prompt with two examples that gets the same wrong answer right three times running

Before you start

You need

A chatbot you can send a full prompt to, and one real reply of your own where the content was right but the shape wasn't, so you have an actual failure to fix instead of a general complaint.

Not covered

Enforcing the shape at the API level with a schema, so a reply can't leave the model in the wrong shape at all, is a separate and stronger fix than showing examples in a prompt.

Leans on

Pin down the exact shape that keeps breaking

Name the shape and one broken reply

Build two examples the model can copy

Pick two examples covering different cases
Give both examples the exact same structure

Send it, check it, and prove it holds

Put the closest example last, then ask
Check the reply against the checklist
Run the same request twice more

Where to go next

Pin a chatbot to one output format

Start there instead if a plain, explicit template is enough on its own. Come here when instructions like that keep drifting anyway.

Audit a failing prompt against a checklist of common mistakes

Go there if two or three examples still don't hold the shape, since something else in the prompt is likely fighting them.

Checked 15 Aug 2026

Part of the Prompt Engineering cookbook