Prompt Golf, a free prompt engineering game
Prompt Golf is a free prompt engineering game. A colleague hands you a brief. Write the one request you would send an AI agent so it can do the job without coming back to you, and play your shot: everything the brief asks for is one stroke, each thing you leave out costs another. Par is 3. A different hole each week, six in turn; your best scores stay in your browser.
How to play Prompt Golf
- Read this week's hole, or pick another one in the row of numbers.
- Write your request in the box, in English, German or French. You do not have to copy the brief: say what the agent needs.
- Play the shot (or press Ctrl+Enter, ⌘+Enter on a Mac). The scorecard shows what your request carries and what it misses.
- Fix what is missing, cut what is not needed, and play again until you reach a hole in one.
How it works (no AI model is called)
Your request is scored in your browser, by rules written for each hole, and never sent anywhere. Each hole lists the things its brief asks for (the situation, what to produce, the tone, the limits) with the words that show each one in English, German and French. A request that carries one gets it ticked; one that does not gets a stroke.
Length counts too. Your request is measured in tokens with an open tokenizer (the same as our token counter), and each hole has a lean length: what a complete, plain request takes. Past it, every 10 tokens cost a stroke. German and French get a longer allowance, since the same request takes about a quarter more tokens in them.
The scorecard sorts what the brief asks for into the four parts of a request: context (the situation, who it is for), task (what to produce), guidelines (how: tone, format, structure) and constraints (the limits: a length, a figure, what not to do).
What the result means
| Strokes | Score | What it says |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hole in one | Complete and lean: the agent can act at once |
| 2 | Birdie | One thing missing, or a little long |
| 3 | Par | Two things to add or cut |
| 4 | Bogey | The agent would have to ask, or guess |
| 5 and more | Double bogey and more | A vague request: expect several rounds of messages |
A stroke stands for a real cost. Each missing piece is a message you would send after the first one, or a guess the agent makes and you then correct. And every message makes an agent re-read its instructions: the agent of our training sessions re-reads about 20,700 tokens of them at every step. In our sessions, "improve it" took 113,000 tokens where the precise request took 49,000.
FAQ
Is Prompt Golf free?
Yes, with no account. It runs entirely in your browser.
Does an AI read my request?
No. The scoring is a set of rules for each hole, run on your device: no AI model is called and nothing you type leaves the page. That also means it checks that your request says each thing, not whether it says it well.
Why did my request miss something it says?
The rules look for the words people usually use for each requirement in English, German and French. If you put it another way, try the plainer wording: it is usually the one an agent reads best too.
What are the four parts of a request?
Context, task, guidelines and constraints: who it is for and why, what to produce, how to produce it, and what limits to respect. A request with the four is one an agent can act on without coming back to you.
Is there a new hole every week?
A different one: the six holes go round one a week, the same for everyone, and you can play every hole at any time. Your best score on each stays in this browser (not in a private window).
Can my whole team play?
Yes. Prompt Golf is one of the games in Tokenacademy's Prompting with AI program, where each employee practises with a real agent and every token is counted. Book a demo to see a session.
See it with your own teams.
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