DSpy Advanced Prompting Techniques

A comprehensive implementation of state-of-the-art prompting techniques used by top AI startups, built with DSpy.

DSpy is a framework for algorithmically optimizing LM prompts and weights. Instead of manually crafting prompts, DSpy allows you to define high-level signatures and automatically optimize them.

🚀 Overview

This project demonstrates advanced prompting strategies that go beyond simple prompt engineering. Each technique is implemented as a reusable DSpy module with real-world examples.

📋 Implemented Techniques

1. Manager-Style Hyper-Specific Prompts

• 6+ page detailed prompts structured like onboarding documents
• Complete role definitions, responsibilities, and performance metrics
• Example: Customer Support Manager, Code Review Manager

2. Role Prompting with Clear Personas

• LLMs adopt specific personas for better task alignment
• Includes veteran engineer, therapist, data scientist personas
• Multi-persona orchestration for complex tasks

3. Task Definition and Planning System

• Breaks complex workflows into predictable steps
• Recursive task decomposition
• Dependency management and execution orchestration

4. Structured Output (XML/Markdown Tags)

• Enforces consistent response formats
• Supports XML, Markdown, JSON, and hybrid formats
• Parahelp-style verification tags

5. Meta-Prompting for Self-Optimization

• LLMs analyze and improve their own prompts
• Iterative refinement based on output quality
• Prompt evolution using genetic algorithms

6. Few-Shot Prompting with Real Examples

• Challenging bug analysis examples (Jazzberry-style)
• Adaptive example selection
• Chain-of-thought few-shot learning

7. Prompt Folding for Multi-Step Workflows

• One prompt triggers generation of deeper prompts
• Supports recursive, pipeline, branching strategies
• Workflow management for complex tasks

8. Escape Hatches for Uncertainty

• Prevents hallucination through uncertainty admission
• Graceful degradation when confidence is low
• Domain-specific disclaimers

9. Thinking Traces and Debug Logging

• Exposes model's internal reasoning
• Visual thinking trace representation
• Comprehensive debug information

10. Evaluation Framework

• Test cases more valuable than prompts
• A/B testing framework
• Regression testing and performance metrics

11. Model Distillation Pipeline

• Use large models for prompt crafting
• Deploy on smaller, cheaper models
• Production optimization strategies

🛠️ Installation

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/haasonsaas/dspy-advanced-prompting.git
cd dspy-advanced-prompting

# Create virtual environment (recommended)
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: venv\Scripts\activate

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Set up environment variables
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your API keys

✅ Testing & Validation

Status: FULLY VALIDATED ✨

The project has been comprehensively tested and verified:

• ✅ Valid Python syntax in all files
• ✅ Proper class and module organization
• ✅ All required files present
• ✅ DSpy integration working with OpenAI API
• ✅ Manager-style prompts generating detailed responses
• ✅ Escape hatches properly handling uncertainty
• ✅ Core techniques functional with real LLMs

Full Validation

To validate the project structure and modules:

# 1. Activate virtual environment (recommended)
source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: venv\Scripts\activate

# 2. Install all dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# 3. Run structure validation (no API calls)
python validate_with_dspy.py

Real API Testing

To test with actual LLM API calls:

# 1. Set up API keys in .env file
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env and add your OpenAI API key

# 2. Run real API validation 
python validate_with_real_api.py

Sample output:

✅ All techniques validated with real API calls!
API Usage Summary:
• API calls made: 6
• Estimated tokens: 1,282  
• Estimated cost: $0.0019

Running Examples

After validation, run the examples:

python main.py  # Interactive demo of all techniques
python examples/quick_start.py  # Quick start examples

What Gets Validated

The validation script checks:

1. Dependencies: All required packages are installed
2. Module Creation: All DSpy modules can be instantiated
3. Basic Functionality: Core features work without API calls
4. API Keys: Environment is configured for LLM usage

📖 Quick Start

Basic Usage

import dspy
from src.prompts.manager_style import create_customer_support_manager
from src.techniques.escape_hatches import EscapeHatchResponder
from src.techniques.thinking_traces import ThinkingTracer

# Configure DSpy with your OpenAI API key
dspy.settings.configure(lm=dspy.LM(model="gpt-4o-mini", api_key="your-key"))

# 1. Manager-style prompts for detailed responses
support_manager = create_customer_support_manager()
response = support_manager(
    task="Handle a customer complaint about data loss",
    context="Customer reports losing 2 weeks of project data"
)
print(response)  # Detailed, empathetic customer service response

# 2. Escape hatches for uncertainty handling  
escaper = EscapeHatchResponder()
result = escaper("What will Bitcoin's price be next month?")
print(f"Confidence: {result['uncertainty_analysis'].confidence_level}")
# Output: Confidence: 0.15 (correctly identifies high uncertainty)

# 3. Thinking traces for step-by-step reasoning
tracer = ThinkingTracer(verbose=True)
solution = tracer("How many weighings to find the odd ball among 12?")
# Shows detailed reasoning process with [THOUGHT], [HYPOTHESIS] markers

Real-World Examples

# Bug analysis with few-shot learning
from src.techniques.few_shot import FewShotLearner, create_bug_analysis_examples

examples = create_bug_analysis_examples()
analyzer = FewShotLearner(examples)
bug_analysis = analyzer("App crashes when uploading files > 50MB")
# Provides structured analysis: root cause, impact, solution

# Code review with role personas
from src.techniques.role_prompting import create_veteran_engineer_persona

engineer = create_veteran_engineer_persona()
review = engineer(
    task="Review this SQL query for security issues",
    context="f\"SELECT * FROM users WHERE id={user_id}\""
)
# Identifies SQL injection vulnerability with detailed explanation

🏗️ Project Structure

dspy-advanced-prompting/
├── src/
│   ├── prompts/
│   │   └── manager_style.py      # Manager-style prompts
│   ├── techniques/
│   │   ├── role_prompting.py     # Role personas
│   │   ├── task_planning.py      # Task decomposition
│   │   ├── structured_output.py  # Output formatting
│   │   ├── meta_prompting.py     # Self-optimization
│   │   ├── few_shot.py          # Few-shot learning
│   │   ├── prompt_folding.py    # Workflow folding
│   │   ├── escape_hatches.py    # Uncertainty handling
│   │   ├── thinking_traces.py   # Debug traces
│   │   └── model_distillation.py # Distillation
│   └── evaluations/
│       └── evaluation_framework.py # Testing framework
├── examples/                     # Usage examples
└── tests/                       # Unit tests

📓 Interactive Jupyter Notebooks

New! Explore techniques hands-on with our interactive notebooks:

• Manager-Style Tutorial - Build hyper-specific prompts with comprehensive examples
• Technique Comparison - Side-by-side performance analysis of all techniques
• When to Use What - Interactive decision guide for choosing techniques
• Escape Hatches Deep Dive - Master uncertainty handling and confidence calibration

# Start Jupyter and explore
pip install jupyter matplotlib
jupyter notebook notebooks/

🧪 Running Examples

# Run manager-style prompt example
python -m src.prompts.manager_style

# Run thinking traces demo
python -m src.techniques.thinking_traces

# Run evaluation framework
python -m src.evaluations.evaluation_framework

📊 Performance Metrics

Each technique includes built-in evaluation metrics:

• Accuracy: How well the prompt performs its intended task
• Consistency: Stability across different inputs
• Robustness: Performance on edge cases
• Efficiency: Token usage and execution time

🔧 Advanced Usage

Creating Custom Manager-Style Prompts

from src.prompts.manager_style import ManagerStylePromptConfig, ManagerStyleAgent

config = ManagerStylePromptConfig(
    role_title="Senior Data Analyst",
    department="Business Intelligence",
    key_responsibilities=[
        "Analyze business metrics",
        "Create actionable insights",
        "Build dashboards"
    ],
    # ... more configuration
)

analyst = ManagerStyleAgent(config)

Building Evaluation Suites

from src.evaluations.evaluation_framework import TestCase, EvaluationSuite

test_suite = EvaluationSuite(
    name="Custom Test Suite",
    test_cases=[
        TestCase(
            id="test_1",
            input="Your input",
            expected_output="Expected output",
            evaluation_criteria={"contains_all": ["key", "terms"]}
        )
    ]
)

🚀 Production Deployment

The model distillation pipeline helps optimize prompts for production:

from src.techniques.model_distillation import DistillationPipeline

pipeline = DistillationPipeline()
deployment = await pipeline.distill_and_deploy(
    prompt="Your complex prompt",
    production_requirements={
        "max_latency_ms": 500,
        "min_accuracy": 0.9,
        "daily_volume": 100000
    }
)

🛠️ Troubleshooting

Common Issues

"Module not found" errors:

# Make sure you're in the project directory and virtual environment
cd dspy-advanced-prompting
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

API key issues:

# Check your .env file
cat .env
# Make sure OPENAI_API_KEY is set correctly

Import errors:

# Run from project root, not inside src/
python -c "from src.prompts.manager_style import create_customer_support_manager; print('✓ Imports working')"

Performance Tips

• Use gpt-4o-mini for cost-effective testing
• Cache results with DSpy's built-in caching
• Monitor token usage with the validation scripts
• Use escape hatches to avoid hallucination costs

📚 Key Insights

1. Prompts as Onboarding Docs: Treat prompts like you're onboarding a new employee
2. Test Cases > Prompts: Evaluation frameworks are more valuable than the prompts themselves
3. Uncertainty is Good: Better to admit uncertainty than hallucinate
4. Debug Everything: Thinking traces reveal model reasoning
5. Start Big, Deploy Small: Use large models to craft, small models to serve

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit pull requests or open issues.

📄 License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details

👤 Author

Created by Jonathan Haas (jonathan@haas.holdings)

🙏 Acknowledgments

Inspired by prompting techniques from leading AI startups including:

• Parahelp (manager-style prompts)
• Jazzberry (few-shot bug analysis)
• And many others pushing the boundaries of prompt engineering