Prompt Engineering~14 min

Reliable Structured Output: Tools, Structured Outputs, and Grounded JSON

Get schema-valid JSON with forced/strict tool use and Structured Outputs, keep reasoning out of the JSON, and ground answers in source documents to cut hallucination.

What you will be able to do

✓Use a tool whose input_schema is your target JSON Schema, forced via tool_choice, as the robust path to structured output
✓Identify Structured Outputs (output_config.format) and strict tool use as the current first-class mechanisms, and explain why assistant prefill is no longer the answer
✓Separate reasoning from structured output so chain-of-thought does not contaminate the JSON
✓Ground answers in provided documents with tagged identifiers and quoted passages to reduce hallucination and enable citations

4 concepts·4 hands-on exercises·3-question check