http://programmer.ie/tags/signatures/ Recent content in Signatures on Programmer.ie Hugo en-us Fri, 28 Aug 2026 10:10:00 +0100 http://programmer.ie/books/dspy-from-first-principles/02-chapter/ Fri, 28 Aug 2026 10:05:00 +0100 http://programmer.ie/books/dspy-from-first-principles/02-chapter/ <h1 id="a-prompt-is-not-yet-a-program">A Prompt Is Not Yet a Program</h1> <p>In chapter 1 we built a reasonable handwritten prompt and found the real problem: one prompt string was carrying the task semantics, role and behavioral framing, output request, and model assumptions at the same time.</p> <p>The next move is not to make a more elaborate prompt. It is to decide what properties an LM component needs before we should reasonably call it a program.</p> http://programmer.ie/books/dspy-from-first-principles/03-chapter/ Fri, 28 Aug 2026 10:10:00 +0100 http://programmer.ie/books/dspy-from-first-principles/03-chapter/ <h1 id="define-the-contract">Define the Contract</h1> <p>In chapter 2 we stopped treating the prompt string as the program. We defined a small DSPy module around a signature:</p> <div class="highlight"><pre tabindex="0" style="color:#f8f8f2;background-color:#272822;-moz-tab-size:4;-o-tab-size:4;tab-size:4;"><code class="language-text" data-lang="text"><span style="display:flex;"><span>sentence </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>editorial_goal </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>local_context </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span> ↓ </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>rewritten_text </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>rationale </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>confidence </span></span></code></pre></div><p>That is better than a handwritten prompt, but it raises the next problem. The program boundary is only as good as the contract we put at that boundary.</p> <p>This chapter is about signatures from first principles. A signature is not a prompt template. It is a task contract.</p>