← Concept IndexDEFINITION WHY IT MATTERS COMMONLY CONFUSED WITH
Prompting & context engineering
Boundaries and constraints
Also called: guardrails in the prompt, do and don't
Explicit limits in the request: length, scope, what to avoid, what to do when unsure, what not to invent. Boundaries tell the model where the edges are.
A boundary like 'if you're not sure, say so — don't guess' is often the difference between a safe answer and a confidently wrong one. Constraints are where you encode your judgment.
Output format. Format is the shape of the answer; boundaries are the rules it must respect while producing it.