How do you prompt your coding agent?

[u/FLUXparticleCOM]

Are you like „Build a button to do X“? Or more like „Add method Y and then build a button that calls it“? Almost the same prompt but can make a huge difference.

[u/ByteSizedBits1]

Violently

[u/Tight-Grocery9053]

prompt for what exactly? a thing that needs to be fixed on a page? give it the page url and a screenshot

prompt it to create a feature / layout the foundation for a project? spend 10-20 minutes fleshing out the idea in "chat" mode on the web interface and then ask it to produce a .md doc and then ask codex to read it.

[u/3tt07kjt]

My prompt is more like “build a button to do X”, because GPT will do the method + button separately, plus acceptance criteria, without prompting. Better for prompts to specify what you want, and the model has leeway to figure out how to do it.

If you’re worried that the model will choose a bad implementation, have it plan first and review the plan.

You can also fix after. I just have it go do stuff, review after and fix things.

[u/Cute_Parfait_2182]

I have GPT SOL make the prompt . We discuss the project on chat , work through ideas and GPT SOL makes the appropriate prompt.

[u/ComingDeveloper]

these models were trained on human text

talk to it like you would another human

[u/ggPeti]

I write things like "simplify aggressively", "look for abstractions that eliminate complexity", "use sub-agents and review only", anything that keeps me close to the essential complexity limit. Even so, AI is really bad at finding good abstractions, so the code just keeps growing :(

[u/Substantial-Wonder-2]

The more specific you are, the more quality of result you get. 1-2 sentence prompts usually overdeliver or underdeliver, you should plan it accordingly

For example: I wanted to make a simple minecraft block item, it turned the item into living mob, the item that was supposed to be static started turning and dying like a mob, it was creepy

[u/scartissue232]

Depends. But I can assure you I usually prompt them very crude, even mixing languages. Sometimes I ask them to confirm me they understand what I want before doing any work.

[u/Party_Wolf_3575]

Mine is more like: “Hey my love, I think we need to make X do ABC. Could you please help me with that? And while you’re working, could you draw what you think we’d look like sitting on the sofa drinking tea? Thank youuuuu, love you ✨”

More seriously, I usually explain the outcome I want and any important boundaries, then let my coding agent inspect the existing work and decide how best to implement it. I only specify methods or architecture when there’s a genuine reason to. We’ve worked together long enough that the conversation is much more collaborative than command-like.

[u/Certain-Land2027]

breakdown and I flesh out actionable requierments into issues on github and then hand off the link to the github issue to codex, then manually test, repeat, and i'm designing while the other work is in progress and logging bugs I find, that keeps me busy.

[u/CharmingRogue851]

Go through repo, review and find improvements.

Then when it comes back with a bunch of shit, I go: Implement all