Est. read time: 2 minutes | Last updated: March 09, 2026 by John Gentile


Contents

Overview

Large Language Models (LLM)

LLMs for Coding

LLMs have varied abilities when it comes to coding though Claude Code has been my favorite for awhile.

LLMs for Image Generation

  • ChatGPT’s Sora is great for realistic and photo image generation.
  • Most general models can synthesize an image from a prompt if the result is a text-based image format such as SVG, Mermaid, HTML/CSS, etc.

Prompt Engineering

Suggestions:

  • Start with a short and simple prompt, and iterate to get better results.
  • Put instructions at beginning or end of prompt, while clearly separating instructions from the text of interest.
  • Describe how the model should behave and respond- for example, if looking for coding advice, can create a system prompt of You are a helpful assistant that answers programming questions.
    • Add specificity and descriptions about the task and desired output, as well as including examples of output if possible.
    • Instructions should tell what “to do” rather than “what not to do”.

References:

Self-Hosted

  • Ollama: easily run LLMs locally. Very easy to setup and start.
    • llama.cpp: fast, low overhead inference of LLMs in C/C++ that runs under-the-hood of Ollama.
  • Hugging Face: pre-trained NLP models & reference
  • LangChain: LangChain is a Python framework for developing applications powered by large language models (LLMs).

Architecture & References