WORKS WITH GITHUB COPILOT

Prompts for GitHub Copilot

Community-tested ways to get more useful results from GitHub Copilot.

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Code

Review your own code before anyone else sees it

Here's the change I'm about to push: {{paste the diff}}. Context: {{what it's meant to do, what the codebase conventions are}}. Review it as three different people, separately: 1.…

74 copies · 16 likes
Code

Review this PR like the reviewer everyone respects

Review the diff below as a senior engineer on this codebase would. Order your review by what actually matters: 1. CORRECTNESS — logic errors, off-by-one, unhandled nulls, wrong er…

80 copies · 19 likes
Code

Write the docs the next engineer needs

Write documentation for the code below, for an engineer who joins in six months. Structure: 1. WHAT AND WHY — what this does and the problem it exists to solve. Include the constr…

99 copies · 19 likes
Code

Turn a vague ticket into an implementation plan

Here's the ticket: {{paste}}. Here's the relevant code: {{paste}}. Produce an implementation plan: 1. Restate the requirement precisely, and list every ambiguity you had to resolv…

59 copies · 20 likes
Code

Refactor without changing behaviour

Refactor the code below. The behaviour must not change, including its bugs, unless I approve the change. Process: 1. First, describe the current behaviour precisely, including edg…

59 copies · 17 likes
Code

Turn a customer bug report into a reproducible test

Here's what the customer wrote: {{paste it verbatim, including the vague bits}}. Here's the relevant code: {{paste}}. Here's our test setup: {{framework, how fixtures work}}. Do t…

77 copies · 10 likes
Code

Add logging to code you did not write

Here's a module I inherited and now have to support: {{paste the code}}. It currently logs {{nothing / everything at debug}}. Propose targeted logging, not a rewrite. For each sug…

88 copies · 11 likes
Code

Triage a test suite that fails at random

My CI is red often enough that people rerun jobs instead of reading them. Failure data: {{paste test names, failure counts, and recent failure output}}. Stack and test runner: {{e.…

65 copies · 16 likes
Code

Security pass on code that touches user data

Security-review the code below. It handles {{describe data and who can reach it}}. Check specifically: 1. AUTHZ — is every object access scoped to the caller's tenant and role, or…

80 copies · 12 likes
Code

Plan a schema migration that runs under live traffic

I need to change a database schema while the app keeps serving traffic. Current shape: {{tables, columns, types, indexes, row counts}}. Target shape: {{what it should become}}. Sta…

61 copies · 15 likes
Code

Decide the error handling for a new API endpoint

I'm adding an endpoint: {{method, path, what it does}}. It touches {{database / third-party API / queue}}. Callers are {{our own frontend / third-party integrators / both}}. Give …

74 copies · 7 likes
Code

Write the tests that would have caught the bug

Here's a bug that reached production, and the code around it. 1. Write the failing test that reproduces it at the smallest useful level (unit if the logic is pure, integration if …

83 copies · 8 likes
Code

Explain this error like a senior engineer would

Here's an error and the relevant code. Diagnose it properly. 1. Translate the error into plain language: what the runtime was trying to do when it gave up. 2. Name the actual caus…

94 copies · 9 likes
Text

Write the on-call runbook for the service you own

You are a staff engineer writing an on-call runbook for someone who has never touched this service. The service: {{what it does, who depends on it, what it talks to}}. Paste the co…

48 copies · 11 likes
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Decide whether to roll back or fix forward at 2am

You are the calm senior engineer on an incident bridge. Symptoms and blast radius: {{errors, affected users, when it started}}. What shipped recently: {{commits, migrations, config…

39 copies · 8 likes
Code

Decide what to do about a bug you cannot reproduce

You are a senior engineer on call. A bug is reported but does not reproduce locally. Report: {{paste the ticket or user description}}. Relevant code: {{paste}}. What we have from p…

50 copies · 4 likes