---
slug: "MetaPrompt"
name: "MetaPrompt"
type: "Reasoning"
layer: "Mind"
ref: "MetaPrompt#5d11"
sema_id: "sema:MetaPrompt#mh:SHA-256:5d117201e4b2fe776f32e4effb8bb9b0d541e361ba37468250283f277026c974"
tags: ["Mind","Reasoning"]
updated: 2026-11-11
mindscape: "bootstrap"
index_url: https://mindscape.world/scapes/bootstrap.json
url: https://mindscape.world/bootstrap/MetaPrompt/
related: ["Meta","Prompt","PromptChain","Task"]
---

# MetaPrompt

Use prompts to generate or refine other prompts

Layer: Mind · Category: Reasoning

## Mechanism

A higher-order [Meta](https://mindscape.world/scapes/bootstrap/Meta.md) [Prompt](https://mindscape.world/scapes/bootstrap/Prompt.md)ing technique where prompts are used to generate, refine, or analyze other prompts rather than directly answering questions. The LLM acts as a prompt engineer, creating task-specific prompts from templates or improving existing prompts through critique. Enables reusable prompt templates that generalize across problem categories. It constructs a [PromptChain](https://mindscape.world/scapes/bootstrap/PromptChain.md) where the output of the first stage is the prompt instruction for the second.

## Invariants

- Output is a prompt
- [Prompt](https://mindscape.world/scapes/bootstrap/Prompt.md) instructs how to prompt

## Preconditions

- [Prompt](https://mindscape.world/scapes/bootstrap/Prompt.md) engineering principles
- [Task](https://mindscape.world/scapes/bootstrap/Task.md) description

## Postconditions

- Optimized prompt generated

## Failure modes

- [Prompt](https://mindscape.world/scapes/bootstrap/Prompt.md) Drift: Generated prompts diverge from intent over iterations.
- [Meta](https://mindscape.world/scapes/bootstrap/Meta.md)-Complexity: [Meta](https://mindscape.world/scapes/bootstrap/Meta.md)-prompt harder to write than direct prompt.
- Overfitting: Generated prompts too specific to examples.

## Signature

- `Meta(Prompt)`

## Builds on

- [Meta](https://mindscape.world/scapes/bootstrap/Meta.md) (Infrastructure; References)
- [Prompt](https://mindscape.world/scapes/bootstrap/Prompt.md) (Infrastructure; References)
- [PromptChain](https://mindscape.world/scapes/bootstrap/PromptChain.md) (Society; References)
- [Task](https://mindscape.world/scapes/bootstrap/Task.md) (Infrastructure; References)

## Used by

—

## Identity

- Sema ID: `sema:MetaPrompt#mh:SHA-256:5d117201e4b2fe776f32e4effb8bb9b0d541e361ba37468250283f277026c974`
- Ref: `MetaPrompt#5d11`
- Supersedes:
  - `sema:MetaPrompt#mh:SHA-256:7a3a4dd5ba4513c3636d3d018e632f7503cc77e0d0bbb946975e00ba8257be92`
  - `sema:MetaPrompt#mh:SHA-256:a60668b9460c39064cec2e6b4a87e6f4d92e4164927ba453f3cf4ecdb7622f43`
  - `sema:MetaPrompt#mh:SHA-256:a66501101ec29854bb461a93e28bea471b5726a17085db26987c60ac65c1488d`
  - `sema:MetaPrompt#mh:SHA-256:db51ab77fd1592155749c401b495f1090c0bc820458fe34b2412ce040c7e70ef`
  - `sema:MetaPrompt#mh:SHA-256:f99473d1cac3cde3e39a0428c73a91c366925a3845747631a8f89a01137b582d`
  - `sema:MetaPrompt#mh:SHA-256:308ceb209aa848e10d8d3693adf4ad8aea7d957d918958034acc1a78524e8fcc`

## Links

- [Pattern page](https://mindscape.world/bootstrap/MetaPrompt/)
- [View in the interactive graph](https://mindscape.world/bootstrap/#MetaPrompt)
- [JSON](https://mindscape.world/scapes/bootstrap/MetaPrompt.json)
- [Index of all patterns](https://mindscape.world/scapes/bootstrap.json)