Diverse Prompts: Illuminating the Prompt Space of Large Language Models with MAP-Elites

Personal use of this material is permitted. Abstract --Prompt engineering is essential for optimizing large language models (LLMs), yet the link between prompt structures and task performance remains underexplored. This work introduces an evolutionary approach that combines context-free grammar (CFG) with the MAP-Elites algorithm to systematically explore the prompt space. Our method prioritizes quality and diversity, generating high-performing and structurally varied prompts while analyzing their alignment with diverse tasks by varying traits such as the number of examples (shots) and reasoning depth. By systematically mapping the phenotypic space, we reveal how structural variations influence LLM performance, offering actionable insights for task-specific and adaptable prompt design. Evaluated on seven BigBench Lite tasks across multiple LLMs, our results underscore the critical interplay of quality and diversity, advancing the effectiveness and versatility of LLMs. The rapid advancement of Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT)-based Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, has revolutionized the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) [1]. These models excel across domains, emphasizing the importance of prompt engineering to optimize performance and bridge user intent with model output [2], [3].