16 short prompts a developer types daily to coding agents, one is just two words
h____ · reddit · 2026-11-07
A Reddit user shared the 16 short prompts they repeatedly type to coding agents, most just a sentence or two, organized by purpose:
Investigate & diagnose: ask for root cause before accepting fixes; have the agent study commit history and sessions to find why a repo keeps regressing; diagnose disk usage (e.g. Codex bloat).
Study & research: compare models and reasoning levels on your own last 7 days of work (task effectiveness, wall-clock time, token speed, $ cost); turn a video into lessons via speech-to-text plus frame screenshots; quick feasibility checks; recurring PostHog analytics reviews.
Understand & explain: "Elaborate, simply." — a two-word prompt for when an agent's update is too dense; ask for lists of actually-executed CLI commands to learn correct usage.
Decide & plan: make the agent list every open question before starting work; clarify what decision is actually being asked.
Build, review & critique: add a temp Settings tab with textboxes to tune visual parameters live without rebuilding; simplify long drafts to essentials for checking; request before/after UI mocks before shipping.
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