Prompt Contract
An approach that makes task input, constraints, expected output shape, and acceptance boundaries explicit so model interaction behaves more like an interface contract.
A free-form prompt can gradually become an interface in a production system. One component supplies particular fields; another component expects a predictable result. A prompt contract makes those otherwise implicit assumptions explicit.
A contract may define:
- task boundaries,
- allowed evidence or context,
- protected or immutable areas,
- output schema,
- uncertainty and failure behavior,
- acceptance criteria.
The purpose is not to make prompts longer. It is to make the assumptions of downstream software inspectable.
Contract compliance still requires validation. Producing syntactically valid JSON, for example, does not establish factual correctness; it only creates a machine-checkable boundary.
Engineering context: Prompt Engineering.