Prompt Library

A good prompt gives Amara a clear goal, the context to reach it, and a way to know when it is done. This page collects reusable prompt patterns you can adapt to your own work. Treat them as starting points — the specifics of your repository matter, and the best prompts name real files, commands, and constraints.

Understanding and exploring

Use these when you are new to a codebase or picking up unfamiliar work.

• “Explain how requests flow from the API layer to the database in this project, and list the main files involved.”
• “Find where user authentication is implemented and summarize the approach in a few sentences.”
• “Trace what happens when the sync command runs, step by step.”

These prompts ask for a map, not a change, so they are safe to run in any permission mode.

Making changes

Frame change requests with a goal and a boundary so Amara knows where to stop.

• “Add a --dry-run flag to the export command that logs what would happen without writing files. Follow the pattern used by the existing --verbose flag.”
• “Fix the off-by-one error in the pagination logic in list.ts. Add a test that would have caught it.”
• “Rename the Client class to ApiClient everywhere and update the imports.”

Naming an existing pattern to follow keeps the result consistent with your code.

Reviewing and verifying

Amara is useful as a second pair of eyes, not only as an author.

• “Review the diff I just made for bugs, missing edge cases, and anything that breaks existing behavior.”
• “Run the test suite and, if anything fails, explain the failure before fixing it.”
• “Check this function for security issues, especially around input handling.”

Pair review prompts with a verification step so the feedback is grounded in what the code actually does.