Zero-shot

Zero-shot means performing a task without any examples in the prompt - the model gets just the instruction and must manage based on knowledge from training. "Translate this text into German" is a typical zero-shot prompt. Modern large models handle zero-shot surprisingly well for most everyday tasks. It's worth reaching for examples (few-shot) when you care about a specific format, unusual style, or the model stubbornly understands the instruction its own way.