Chat API: how are different text prompts prioritized/weighed in function calling?

API
1

Take a typical OpenAI Chat API function call:

Function:

{
  "name": "write-blog-post",
  "description": "Write a blog post on the given topic.",
  "parameters": {
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
      "text": {
        "description": "text for the blog post",
        "type": "string"
      }
    }
  },
  "required": [
    "text"
  ],
  "additionalProperties": false,
  "strict": false
}

Messages:

[
  {
    "role": "system",
    "content": "Write a blog post on a given topic, return as JSON format."
  },
  {
    "role": "user",
    "content": "Please write a blog post on the topic: “The future of AI”."
  }
]

You essentially have 4 text inputs:

  1. Function description
  2. Function parameter description
  3. System message
  4. User message

Where should the main effort of my prompt writing be? Are all 4 equally important? Can I focus on just one of them?

2

Here’s some tips, later in this linked post, written within the month.

The function specification is an automatic part of the system message and is in a special format the AI has been trained on.

With the lack of attention that latest gpt-4o pay to context, especially with growing conversation, techniques like injecting post-prompt reminders after user input about the utility of functions, or even reproducing again the output schema for a structured response, start to become workarounds to poor quality.

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