Decoder. plain-English AI glossary

DSPy

▲ RisingDSPy

A framework from Stanford that treats prompts as compilers—optimize them automatically using training data and evaluations.

Think of it like

Instead of hand-writing prompts, write a program and let DSPy optimize the prompts inside it.

Example

Define a module: input text → summarizer → translator → QA. You write the high-level flow, DSPy learns the best prompts for each step from examples and validates on a test set.

How it actually works

DSPy decouples logic from prompts. You write Python functions that call LLMs via DSPy primitives; DSPy optimizes the prompts under the hood by looking at training data and your evaluations. This shifts prompting from art to engineering. Young but growing in adoption; changes mindset from 'what prompt works' to 'what examples and structure work.'

For product teams

Reduces manual prompt tuning; brings structure and measurability to prompt engineering.

For engineers

Compiler-based prompt optimization; training-free adaptation; evaluations drive improvement.

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