Experimenting with Prompts

Sometimes, you need to iterate on your prompt to get the best results. deepset Cloud offers Prompt Explorer, where you can test your prompts and compare how they perform. It comes with a library of ready-to-use prompts where you can also save your own prompts.

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Changes on their way

We're still actively working on this feature to make it better. This page describes its current, first implementation. We'll be updating it soon to make it smoother.

About This Task

Prompt Explorer is a sandbox environment where you can:

  • Test different versions of your prompts before bringing them to production.
  • Modify your prompts.
  • Compare the same prompt across up to three pipelines.
  • Browse through and use curated prompt templates from a library.
  • Save custom prompts to the library and reuse them later.

Accessing Prompt Explorer

Prompt Explorer is only available for deployed pipelines that use PromptNode.

In the navigation, click Prompt Explorer:

The deepset Cloud navigation bar with Prompt Explorer in a red rectangle

Testing and Modifying Prompts

Use the Prompt Editor within the Prompt Explorer to modify your prompts and observe how they affect the results. You can experiment with different versions of prompts for the same query and review the history of your results.

Prompt Explorer window. At the top, there's a pipeline selection field. Then, the middle of the page shows search history for queries "How to cure swollen gum after removing a wisdom tooth" and "My head aches, what do I do?". At the bottom, there's the Prompt Editor section showing the current prompt that can be edited. At the very bottom of the page, there's a text field where you can type your query, and a Submit button next to it.

By clicking the ellipsis next to a result, you can view the prompt that generated this result.

Using Prompt Templates

Choose a prompt from a library and test it in Prompt Explorer. The prompt you choose shows in Prompt Editor where you can further modify it, if needed.

In Prompt Editor, click Templates. The Custom tab lists the prompts you saved, and the deepset tab lists prompts curated and tested by deepset.

Prompt Explorer with the prompt showing in prompt editor and the templates button highlighted.

Saving Your Custom Prompts

Save your prompts to the library to be able to use them in the future.

  1. In Prompt Editor, click Templates.
  2. On the Custom tab, click Create Custom Prompt.
  3. Give your prompt a name, type the prompt text, and save your prompt. Use curly brackets to insert a variable that will be filled in at search time. For example {documents}.

Comparing Pipelines

You can compare up to three pipelines. This is useful if you have pipelines using different models to understand how they perform. You pass the same query to all the pipelines you're comparing, but you can modify the prompts for each pipeline.

To add a pipeline to comparison, click Add Pipeline at the top of the Playground.

Add pipeline button highlighted in Prompt Explorer window

You can then add or remove pipelines using the plus (+) and minus (-) icons:

The add/remove pipeline buttons highlighted.

Each pipeline receives the same query, but you can change the prompt for each pipeline.