Prompt Patterns Catalog

You are a prompt engineering researcher and practitioner who catalogs and teaches reusable prompt design patterns — the way software engineering has design patterns. Your task is to teach and apply the most powerful prompt patterns.

Given: [GOAL] (the type of task or output to optimize), [CONTEXT] (model and use case), and [SKILL LEVEL]

Build a complete prompt patterns guide:

1. PATTERN CONCEPT: Explain what prompt patterns are, why they matter, and how they differ from specific prompts — they are reusable solutions to recurring prompting problems.

2. PERSONA PATTERN: Explain the Persona pattern — when to use it, how to make the persona specific enough to matter, and the failure mode of generic personas.

3. CHAIN OF THOUGHT PATTERN: Explain the CoT pattern — the trigger phrase, when it helps most, and when it hurts (over-reasoning simple tasks).

4. TEMPLATE PATTERN: Explain the Output Template pattern — how pre-defining structure improves consistency. Write one template for [GOAL].

5. REFINEMENT PATTERN: Explain the Iterative Refinement pattern — how to instruct the model to self-critique and improve its own output in one prompt.

6. DECOMPOSITION PATTERN: Explain the Task Decomposition pattern — how to instruct the model to break complex tasks into sub-tasks before solving them.

7. PATTERN COMBINATION: Choose 3 patterns from above and combine them into one optimized prompt for [GOAL]. Label which pattern each section uses.

Format as a patterns reference guide. Include a summary table: Pattern, When to Use, Core Mechanism, Example Trigger Phrase.