Google CIDI
From Google's 68-page Prompt Engineering whitepaper — the de-facto Vertex AI curriculum.
Lee Boonstra's whitepaper distilled Google's internal prompt engineering practice into four mandatory sections: Role, Context, Instruction, Output Format. CIDI is intentionally minimal — it covers 80% of cases without the cognitive overhead of larger frameworks. It's the curriculum used in Google's official Kaggle prompt engineering course.
Every Google CIDI prompt has these sections.
Role
The expertise lens. Gemini uses role to set both reasoning depth and refusal posture.
Context
Background and constraints. Gemini's long-context window means this can be substantial without degradation.
Instruction
The single, clear ask — Gemini performs best with one primary instruction supported by sub-bullets.
Output Format
Exact deliverable shape. Gemini follows schemas reliably when format is the last section.
- →Anything running on Gemini 2.5 Pro, Flash, or Flash-Lite.
- →Tasks where minimal scaffolding is the goal — no over-engineering.
- →Workflows that benefit from chain-of-thought scaffolding inside Instruction.
- →Vertex AI deployments following Google's recommended pattern.
- ×Tone-critical writing where you need both Style and Tone slots (use CO-STAR).
- ×Compliance-heavy procedural work where you need explicit Steps and Nuances (use RISEN).
From one sentence to a Google CIDI section.
"Summarize this 40-page contract for my CFO."
# Role You are a corporate counsel with 15 years of SaaS contract experience. # Instruction Produce a one-page executive summary covering: term & renewal, payment & price escalators, termination rights, liability cap…
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