Prompting in production is not clever wording, it is making outputs deterministic enough to build on. Three techniques carry it: structured outputs (make the model return JSON in a schema you defined, so downstream code can rely on it), few-shot (show examples of exactly the input-output behaviour you want), and decomposition (break a hard ask into steps the model handles reliably rather than one it fumbles).

Structured output is the big one - it turns a chatbot into a component, because a defined schema is something the rest of your system can trust. Tested live against your own endpoint.