Interview Bank

How to reason about it · think before answering

1. The first half is a warm-up; the discriminating half is why the default is dangerous.
2. State the role: it is the one instruction block whose weight stays stable across dozens of turns, setting identity, capability boundaries and output format.
3. Then give three concrete consequences rather than 'not customized enough': it does not know your business boundary so it happily answers off-topic questions; it does not constrain output format so stray Markdown headings break your UI; and worst, it changes when the framework updates — your tested behavior rests on invisible text, and the bug appears with zero code changes.
4. Land on practice: a production system prompt is assembled from a template — persona, capability boundary, output requirements, dynamic context — with the last part rebuilt per request.
5. Expect: what gets forgotten in dynamic context? The current time. Models have no clock; without today's date they cannot resolve 'the order I placed three days ago'.
6. Second follow-up: how do you test a prompt? Treat it as configuration, not code — store it, version it, roll it out to a percentage, because you cannot unit-test 'the tone got friendlier'.

分析过程 · 先想清楚再作答

1. 前半句是送分题，后半句才是区分度所在——很多人答得出 system prompt 是干什么的，答不出「默认值有什么坑」。
2. 先说作用：它是唯一一段在整段对话里权重稳定、不会被后续几十轮稀释的指令，用来设定身份、能力边界和输出格式。
3. 再答「为什么不能用默认的」，要给出三条具体后果而不是泛泛说「不够定制」：一是它不知道你的业务边界，用户问业务外的问题它会热情地答；二是它不约束输出格式，前端样式会被冷不丁冒出的 Markdown 标题打乱；三是最要命的——它会随框架升级而变化，你测好的所有行为建立在一段看不见的文本上，出 bug 时你的代码一行没动，极难排查。
4. 结论落到工程做法：生产环境的 system prompt 是拼出来的模板，结构是「人设 + 能力边界 + 输出要求 + 动态上下文」，最后一块每次请求现拼。
5. 可以预期的追问：动态上下文里最容易漏什么？答「当前时间」——模型没有时钟，不告诉它今天几号，它算不出「三天前下的单」是哪天。这个细节很能体现有没有真做过。
6. 第二个追问：prompt 怎么测试？答案是把它当配置而不是代码——存库、加版本号、支持按比例灰度，因为你没法写单元测试断言「模型语气变友好了」。

How to reason about it · think before answering

1. The trap is answering that context engineering is just prompt engineering leveled up. Interviewers want a rule they can apply to classify a live problem.
2. Start with the object of each. Prompt engineering shapes content: how to phrase one instruction precisely. Context engineering allocates budget: how much of the window each part gets and when to drop things. One optimizes inside a single call, the other manages state across turns.
3. Then give a symptom-based test. Wrong once but right after rephrasing means a prompt problem. Fine for five turns and violating the original constraints by turn twenty means a context problem. Retrieving the data and then claiming it does not exist is also a context problem: the information is in the window but buried.
4. Conclusion: you switch not when the prompt is good enough, but when the cause moves from single-turn phrasing to multi-turn accumulation. Adding tools, adding retrieval, or running long sessions each trigger the switch.
5. Expect the follow-up: does context engineering subsume prompt engineering? The system prompt is one of the four parts, so prompt engineering is a subproblem, but it cannot touch tool definitions, history, or tool results.

分析过程 · 先想清楚再作答

1. 这题最容易答成「上下文工程是提示词工程的升级版」，那是营销话术。面试官想听的是一条能当场用来分类问题的判据。
2. 怎么拆：先给对象的差别。提示词工程处理的是内容——一段话怎么写才准确；上下文工程处理的是预算分配——整只箱子里各块占多少、什么时候该扔。前者是单次调用内的优化，后者是跨多轮的状态管理。
3. 再给一条现场可用的分类法，用症状反推：同一个问题问一次答错、换个说法就对，是提示词问题；前五轮正常、第二十轮开始违反最初约束，是上下文问题；明明查到了数据模型却说没有，也是上下文问题——信息在窗口里，只是被淹没了。
4. 结论：切换的时机不是「提示词写得够好了」，而是「问题的成因从单次表达变成了多轮累积」。加了工具、加了检索、开始多轮长跑，这三件事任何一件发生，都意味着该切换了。
5. 可预期的追问：那上下文工程包含提示词工程吗？答：系统提示是上下文四块里的一块，所以提示词工程是上下文工程的一个子问题，但它解决不了另外三块——工具定义、历史和工具结果都不是靠把话写好能管住的。