AI Prompt Engineering · Lesson

Requesting Lists and Bullet Points

Ask AI for numbered or bulleted lists with specific item counts.

Why Lists Work Well with AI

Lists are one of the clearest output formats to request from an AI. They are unambiguous, scannable, and easy to verify — you can immediately count whether you got the number of items you asked for.

Knowing the exact syntax for list requests helps you get consistently formatted output without follow-up corrections.

Basic List Requests

The most common list request patterns:

'List 5 ways to...'
'Give me 10 bullet points about...'
'Name 7 examples of...'
'Provide 3 reasons why...'

Always specify the exact count. Saying 'list some ways' produces a variable number of items — sometimes 3, sometimes 12. A number eliminates that variance.

import anthropic

client = anthropic.Anthropic(api_key='sk-ant-your-key-here')

response = client.messages.create(
    model='claude-opus-4-5',
    max_tokens=300,
    messages=[{
        'role': 'user',
        'content': 'List exactly 5 ways a developer can improve Python code performance. Each item: one sentence only.'
    }]
)
print(response.content[0].text)

All lessons in this course

← Back to AI Prompt Engineering