Stop condition
A stop condition is an instruction telling a model when to stop and ask for clarification instead of proceeding on assumptions.
It is the single most useful addition to a thin prompt. Without one, a model given an underspecified brief will invent the missing details confidently, and those inventions are harder to spot than a request for clarification.
Related terms
- Hallucination
- A hallucination is model output that is presented confidently as fact but is fabricated — an invented citation, statistic, quotation, function name, or event.
- Stop sequence
- A stop sequence is a string that causes a model to stop generating as soon as it produces that string.
More on prompt structure
See the full glossary, read the guides, or put it into practice in the prompt builder.