Prompting & generation
Showing a language model a handful of worked examples inside the request, so it copies the pattern for the new case.
Formal
A way of steering a large language model by placing several input-answer pairs in the prompt before the real input; the model picks up the task from these examples at inference time, with no change to its weights.
In plain English
Like showing a new cashier three filled-in receipts before asking them to write the fourth - they copy the layout without a lesson.
In practice
A customer service lead at a Danish webshop puts five old return notes, each followed by its reason code, above every new note, and the assistant replies with just a code in the same style.
Why it matters
It lets a team get a new task working in minutes without fine-tuning, but the examples use up space in the context window and the model may copy their odd habits too closely.