# Basic Prompts

Basic prompt components provide core functionality for creating and managing prompt templates with dynamic variables.

## Prompt

A prompt is a structured input to a language model that instructs the model how to handle user inputs and variables.

Prompt components create prompt templates with custom fields and dynamic variables for providing your model structured, repeatable prompts.

Prompts are a combination of natural language and variables created with curly braces.

### Use a prompt component in a flow

An example of modifying a prompt can be found in the [Quickstart](../workflows/quickstart), where a basic chatbot flow is extended to include a full vector RAG pipeline.

The default prompt in the **Prompt** component is `Answer the user as if you were a GenAI expert, enthusiastic about helping them get started building something fresh.`

This prompt creates a "personality" for your LLM's chat interactions, but it doesn't include variables that you may find useful when templating prompts.

To modify the prompt template, in the **Prompt** component, click the **Template** field. For example, the `{context}` variable gives the LLM model access to embedded vector data to return better answers.

```
Given the context
{context}
Answer the question
{user_question}
```

When variables are added to a prompt template, new fields are automatically created in the component. These fields can be connected to receive text input from other components to automate prompting, or to output instructions to other components. An example of prompts controlling agents behavior is available in the sequential tasks agent starter flow.

### Inputs

| Name     | Display Name | Info                                             |
| -------- | ------------ | ------------------------------------------------ |
| template | Template     | Create a prompt template with dynamic variables. |

### Outputs

| Name   | Display Name   | Info                                                            |
| ------ | -------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------- |
| prompt | Prompt Message | The built prompt message returned by the `build_prompt` method. |

## Usage Notes

* **Dynamic Variables**: Support for variables using curly brace syntax `{variable_name}`
* **Automatic Field Generation**: Input fields are automatically created for each variable in the template
* **Template Flexibility**: Combine natural language instructions with dynamic content
* **Component Integration**: Easy connection to other components for automated prompting
* **Personality Definition**: Define consistent AI behavior and response patterns
