Output formatting/models/system prompts

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Through my use of openclaw and the quest to keep the costs low by using cheaper models, I have discovered that the cheaper models often give great responses to the simple type of work that I do. I realize that I’ve been choosing models in pickaxe based on the formatting of the output and the speed of response.

I’m wondering if anybody else reads that statement and thinks, “Well, that’s obvious.” I imagine you are using the system prompt to be very specific about how the responses should be formatted rather than just finding a model that happens to format them the way I prefer. What tips do you guys have for that? Would anybody mind sharing some examples of what they typically would place into a system prompt?

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Here are few tips on how to get the best “your kind of answers”:

  1. Tell each Pickaxe what their role is (yes this is pretty obvious but very important).
  2. Tell what you want to achieve aka what is your goal? (is it a list, is it a simple text answer or something else?)
  3. Tell in what format you want it (do you want it to be text, markdown, html etc.)
  4. Tell it what you want your tone to be “professional”, “friendly”, “angry” etc. This is also important since it affects the wording and answer the bot will give.
  5. If the prompt gets long, give the Pickaxe step by step guide on how to move forward, note that you can have multiple different paths like “Path A - 1,2,3” and “Path B - 1,2,3” if required.
  6. Remember to tell the bot about your actions and when to use them. Otherwise your triggers turn too much of a guessing game, but when given strict rules when and how to use actions the triggers work much better.

And finally my secret “sauce” so to speak. Once you done a prompt give it to a LLM and ask it to improve it. There are usually ton of things you might have missed as a person, which the LLM can help you fill up to really dig in on that prompt to make it better.

Hope this helps you get started. I have been doing a lot of improvements to my own bots lately and these are just few things that are important when doing a great prompt.

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