What is Verbose (Prompting)?

Verbose prompting is when you explicitly ask the AI to be detailed, thorough, and explanatory in its responses. Instead of "Explain caching," you ask "Explain caching in detail with examples, edge cases, and real-world scenarios." The AI provides comprehensive answers with more context, examples, and nuance—but at the cost of longer responses and higher token usage.

When Should You Use This?

Use verbose prompting when you're learning a new topic, debugging complex issues, need comprehensive documentation, or want to explore edge cases. Great for research, onboarding new team members, writing detailed guides, or when you genuinely need deep understanding over quick answers. Add phrases like "explain in detail," "be thorough," "include examples and edge cases."

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• •Using verbose for every query—burns tokens and time when you just need a quick answer
• •Not being specific—"be detailed" is vague; ask for what you want (examples? edge cases? comparisons?)
• •Ignoring the fluff—verbose AI can ramble; ask follow-ups to drill into what matters
• •Expecting perfect detail—AI still hallucinates, just more verbosely (verify facts!)
• •Not combining with other techniques—use with Chain of Thought, examples, constraints for best results

Real-World Examples

• •Documentation—"Write comprehensive API docs for this function, include all params, edge cases, examples"
• •Learning—"Explain React hooks in detail with real-world use cases and common pitfalls"
• •Debugging—"Analyze this error thoroughly, explore all possible causes and solutions"
• •Code reviews—"Review this PR in detail, check for bugs, performance, security, style"