AI Prompt Engineering: ChatGPT, Claude & Claude Code 2026

Are you using ChatGPT or Claude but not getting the results you expected?

The problem is not the AI. The problem is how you are communicating with it.

This free course teaches you Prompt Engineering — the skill of writing instructions

that get great results from AI tools, every single time. No guesswork. No luck.

Just a repeatable system used by professionals in 2025 and 2026.

By the end of this course you will write prompts like a professional, understand

how AI tools actually work under the hood, and have a toolkit of 10 proven techniques

you can apply immediately — in any job, any industry, any use case.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

What Large Language Models (LLMs) actually are and how they generate responses

The real difference between ChatGPT and Claude — and when to use each one

What tokens are, why they matter, and how they affect cost and performance

What a context window is and how to use it strategically

10 professional prompt engineering techniques with live demonstrations

How to install and use Claude Code in VS Code and the terminal

Essential Claude Code commands every developer needs to know

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

THE 10 PROMPT ENGINEERING TECHNIQUES

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Every technique is taught with a live demo in ChatGPT or Claude so you see

exactly what changes and why.

1)  Be Specific and Direct

    Stop writing vague prompts and start getting precise, on-target results

    by specifying quantity, format, length and audience upfront.

2)  Assign a Role or Persona

    Tell the AI who it is before you ask what to do. A well-assigned role

    activates the right knowledge and tone for your specific task.

3)  Specify the Output Format

    Tell the AI exactly how to structure its response — bullet points,

    numbered list, table, JSON, one sentence. Stop editing and start using.

4)  Few-Shot Prompting — Give Examples

    Show the AI one example of exactly what you want. This communicates

    style, tone and format faster than any written description.

5)  Chain of Thought — Think Step by Step

    For complex tasks, ask the AI to reason through the problem before

    answering. This dramatically improves accuracy on anything involving

    logic or multiple steps.

6)  Constraints and Boundaries

    Tell the AI what NOT to do. Explicit constraints eliminate default

    behaviours you don't want — jargon, clichés, excessive length.

7)  Iterative Refinement

    Get a draft first, then refine it in the same conversation. This is

    how professionals work with AI — not one shot, but a collaboration.

8)  Task Decomposition — Break It Into Steps

    Number your instructions and ask the AI to complete them in order.

    Prevents skipping, mixing outputs and missing steps.

9)  Ask AI to Ask You Questions

    Let the AI interview you before it writes anything. The result is

    far more personalised and on-target than anything you could prompt cold.

10)  Negative Prompting

    Prevent specific failure modes you know the AI tends to produce.

    Surgically remove defaults that don't match your context.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

TOKENS AND CONTEXT WINDOWS EXPLAINED

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Most people skip this topic. That is a mistake.

Tokens are the fundamental unit of how AI reads and writes. Understanding

them tells you why AI responses cost money, why long conversations slow down,

and why some prompts work better than others.

We explain tokens using the live tokenizer at chatGPT so you can

see exactly how your text breaks into tokens in real time.

Context windows are the AI's working memory. We cover how large each model's

window is, what fills it up, and practical strategies to manage it so you

always get the best results.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CHATGPT vs CLAUDE — KNOW YOUR TOOLS

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Both tools are demonstrated live throughout the course. You will understand:

→ What makes ChatGPT the right choice for certain tasks

→ What makes Claude the right choice for others

→ How their context windows, pricing, tone and strengths differ

→ Why the best professionals use both — not just one

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CLAUDE CODE FOR DEVELOPERS

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The final section of the course introduces Claude Code — Anthropic's AI

assistant that runs directly inside your terminal and VS Code. Not in a

browser tab. Right where you write code.

We cover:

→ How to install Claude Code on Windows with one command

→ Why Claude Code is different from using Claude in a browser

→ The essential commands every developer needs: claude, --continue,

   /compact, /clear, /help and more

→ A live demonstration on a real project inside VS Code

This section sets the foundation for the paid follow-up course where we

build a complete application using only prompts.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

FREE DOWNLOADABLE ASSETS

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

All students get free access to the complete asset pack — four professional

PDF reference documents you can download, print and use every day.

The pack includes:

→ Prompt Engineering Cheat Sheet

   All 10 techniques on one page with example prompts for each

→ Claude Code Command Reference 

   Every essential command, installation guide and quick-start workflow

→ ChatGPT vs Claude Quick Guide

   Side-by-side comparison of both tools with use-case recommendations

→ Tokens and Context Windows Reference Card

   Key numbers, pricing breakdown and 5 token-saving habits

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

WHAT COMES NEXT — PAID FOLLOW-UP COURSE

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

This free course is the foundation. The paid follow-up course is where

we build with what you have learned.

In the next course we use Claude Code and the 10 prompting techniques

to build a complete Laravel 12 web application from scratch. No copying

code from tutorials. No boilerplate. Just you, prompts, and a working

deployable application at the end.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

WHO THIS COURSE IS FOR

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

→ Complete beginners who want to understand AI tools properly

→ Professionals in any field — marketing, writing, law, HR, finance —

   who want to use AI efficiently and get consistent results

→ Developers who want to understand Claude Code and use it as an

   AI pair programmer in their daily workflow

→ Students preparing to enter an industry where AI proficiency matters

→ Freelancers who want to deliver better work in less time

→ Anyone currently using ChatGPT or Claude but not getting results

   they are consistently happy with

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

REQUIREMENTS

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

→ A computer with internet access

→ A free ChatGPT account at chatgpt

→ A free Claude account at claude

→ No coding experience required for most of the course

→ For the Claude Code section: Node.js 18 or higher (free at nodejs official site)

→ No prior AI or prompt engineering knowledge needed

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

This course is created by Appcentic — a software services company founded

by Abhinay Kumar, working with clients globally for over 8 years.

At Appcentic we build real software for real clients. We teach on Udemy and

on-site because we believe the gap between what universities teach and what

the industry needs is too wide — and we want to help close it.

This free course is the first step. Everything in it is practical,

demonstrated live, and built on what actually works in professional

environments in 2025 and 2026.