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Prompt Anatomy Budget

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About This MicroSim

A horizontal stacked bar of the six components of a typical production prompt (system prompt, tool definitions, few-shot, retrieved context, user message, output reserve) with a vertical budget marker. Adjust component sliders to see total move; click auto-actions to apply aggressive trims (auto-shrink system prompt, auto-prune few-shot, auto-compress retrieved). The status banner says WITHIN or OVER BUDGET.

How to Use

  1. Read defaults. Components sum to 8,000; budget is 8,000. Right at the edge.
  2. Push retrieved context up to 5K. Watch the bar extend past the budget marker — status flips to OVER BUDGET.
  3. Click Auto-prune few-shot. Few-shot drops 60%; total comes back under budget.
  4. Drop budget to 4K. Most defaults are now over. Use auto-actions to fit.

Bloom Level

Apply (L3) — implement a prompt length budget by allocating tokens across components.

Iframe Embed Code

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<iframe src="sims/prompt-anatomy-budget/main.html" height="622px" width="100%" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Lesson Plan

Audience

Engineers tuning production prompts to a length budget.

Duration

10–15 minutes inside Chapter 13.

Prerequisites

Chapter 13 sections on Prompt Length Budget, Instruction Compression, Few-Shot Pruning.

Activities

  1. Allocate from scratch (5 min). Set all components to minimum, then add back what you'd actually need to a 4K budget.
  2. Trim to fit (5 min). Set total to 12K (well over budget); use auto-actions to bring it under 8K.
  3. Discuss the priorities (5 min). Which components should be trimmed last? (Output reserve and user message are usually inviolable.)

Practice Scenarios

# Scenario Solution
1 Default 8K budget — over by 100 Trim System or Few-shot
2 4K budget — way over Auto-prune + auto-shrink
3 16K budget — way under Add few-shot examples or retrieved context
4 Need to fit 5K of retrieved context Compress system + drop few-shot
5 Fixed user message at 1.5K Squeeze everything else

Assessment

Learner can fit a prompt to a budget by trading off components and explaining the reasoning.

References

  1. Chapter 13 — Prompt Length Budget, Instruction Compression.
  2. Anthropic Cookbook — Prompt structure and budget.

Senior Instructional Designer Quality Review

Reviewer perspective: 15+ years designing engineering curricula for adult professional learners.

Overall verdict

Approve as-is for Chapter 13. Score: 86/100 (B+). Stacked bar with budget marker is the right primitive for L3 "implement a budget." Auto-actions provide an easy demonstration of the standard trim techniques.

What works

  1. Bloom alignment. L3 "implement" requires applying a procedure; the budget framing gives a clear procedure.
  2. Auto-actions teach the standard moves. Without these, learners might invent ad-hoc techniques rather than learn the named ones.
  3. Visual budget overstep. The red overflow line + status banner makes the failure visceral.

Gaps

  1. No quality risk shown. Aggressive few-shot pruning hurts quality; the sim treats trims as free. Score impact: −2.
  2. No "lock this component" affordance. A real-world budget exercise often has hard constraints (user message can't shrink). Score impact: −2.
  3. Only one scenario. Loading multiple representative prompt shapes would generalize. Score impact: −2.

Accessibility

Color-coded components are accompanied by text labels. Native sliders.

Cognitive load

6 sliders + budget slider + 3 buttons + status banner. At the upper edge but tractable.

Recommendation

Approve. Open follow-up for component-locking (gap 2).