Prompt Design for Information Retrieval and Q&A Systems

Information retrieval and question answering (IR/Q&A) systems are among the most common applications built using large language models. These systems aim to find relevant information from a knowledge source and synthesize it into a coherent answer to a user's query. Prompt templates play a fundamental role in guiding the LLM to perform this task effectively, ensuring it understands the context and the specific question being asked.

At its core, a Q&A prompt template needs to convey two primary pieces of information to the model: the context containing the potential answer and the user's question. Without a structured template, simply concatenating the context and question can lead to unpredictable results or failure to utilize the context correctly. A well-designed template provides clear instructions on how the model should process these inputs.