If you use AI for coding long enough, you start to see patterns. These patterns become prompts. And these prompts become the difference between shipping and spinning your wheels.
Hi, my name is Tom Smykowski, I'm a staff full-stack engineer. I build and scale SaaS platforms to millions of users, working end-to-end from system architecture to frontend to mobile. On this blog I share practical techniques for working effectively with AI on real production code.
Some people call this prompt engineering. It's not like civil engineering where you build bridges, so I'm hesitant to use that term. Especially since you don't need an engineering degree to do it. But let it slide. We'll focus on the 3 prompts that changed how I ship code.
These aren't fancy techniques. They're simple phrases that took me months to discover through trial and error. Each one solves a specific problem I kept running into when working with AI on real production code. Not toy examples. Not tutorial projects. Actual software that runs in production and serves real users.
1. I'm a Human
It's funny actually. You'd assume that AI knows what it is and with whom it communicates. But that's not true. You can give AI an instruction that it's an engineer, or a sales person, or a rabbit. And it will try its best to imitate one. But it also doesn't know with whom it talks.
As a result, it tends to ignore the limits of human existence. For example, we don't have memory as strong as AI. So it doesn't provide all details in a chunk of response. It assumes you remember your discussion precisely from a month ago.
That's why I use the prompt "I'm human" with some specific details. It improves the communication tremendously.
2. Don't Assume
This one is pretty powerful when you're working in precise domains, like business logic. AI likes to assume things it doesn't know about. It fills gaps with plausible-sounding nonsense.
The prompt "Don't assume" prevents that from happening. What happens when you use it? The AI starts asking questions instead of making things up.
3. Before Pushing, Do All Tests
In long-running tasks where I just ask AI to do something, and it works for 2-3 days straight, I like to make sure that I won't find AI just breaking stuff or introducing errors and glitches.
That's why I tend to keep a very extensive test suite for each project. The investment in tests pays for itself many times over.