Definition
Plain language
Getting one attempt, with no examples and no second pass.
As stated in the literature
Single-sample generation without iterative refinement or in-context exemplars; contrasted here with repeated sampling and with reasoning-enabled decoding.
Also called: one shot, one-shot authoring
Why it matters: One-shot results show what a model can do unaided, which is the setting most real users are in when they paste a prompt and take the first answer.
For example, a one-shot request is asking the model to write a full test suite in a single reply, with no sample suites to imitate and no chance to revise it.
Heard on the show
“Give each model exactly one shot.”Episode 011 — When RL Actually Teaches Agents Something New, And When It Doesn't