Why Data and Context Matter More Than Prompts in AI
7 min read
·
Jul 20, 2025
Many teams make the same mistake when adopting AI. They focus too much on prompts.
The truth is simple: Data > Context > Prompts.
The Baking Analogy
Think of building with AI like baking a cake.
Ingredients (Data): The raw materials. Customer interactions, documents, logs, or knowledge bases.
Recipe (Context): How the ingredients fit together. Proportions, relationships, and structure.
Instructions (Prompts): The steps to follow.
Without eggs or sugar, your cake will fail. It does not matter how carefully you fold the batter.
Even with the right ingredients, if you dump them in a bowl without a recipe, you may get something edible once. But you will never reproduce it.
A recipe turns ingredients into something consistent. Context turns raw data into insight.
Why Teams Get Stuck on Prompts
Prompts get attention because they feel accessible. Anyone can experiment with them. Stories about “prompt engineering” make it sound like the secret.
But prompts are the last step. Without good data and context, even the cleverest instruction produces weak results.
The Power of Context
A team once spent weeks tweaking prompts with no real improvement. Then they added a new data source as context. The same prompts suddenly produced strong results.
The difference was not the wording. It was the context.
Context provides:
Relevance
Relationships
Patterns
It explains how the pieces fit together.
The Hierarchy
The order is clear:
Gather ingredients. Collect and clean the data.
Build the recipe. Add context, structure, and relationships.
Refine instructions. Only after data and context are in place.
Most teams start at step three. That is why their “cake” keeps collapsing.
Closing Thought
Prompts matter, but they are the final step. Data and context matter more.
If you want consistent results, start with clean ingredients. Layer in context. Then refine prompts.
The difference between failure and success is not clever wording. It is a solid foundation.
