Gemini: include a few varied examples in your prompt

Google’s Gemini API docs go further than most: they recommend always including few-shot examples, because prompts without them are likely to be less effective.

How to do it well

• Show 2-5 input → output pairs that demonstrate exactly the format you want.
• Make them specific and varied, so the model learns the pattern, not one example’s quirks.
• Keep formatting identical across examples (same labels, same order).
• If the examples are clear enough, you can delete some of the instructions.

Watch out: too many near-identical examples can make outputs overfit to them.