Prompting - Basics

Here's the ABCs of working with Emergent and how you should prompt the agent to get the best and most efficient results.

Why This Matters

The foundation of every app in Emergent is a good initial prompt - and perhaps more importantly, good etiquette when it comes to continuously prompting the agent and iterating.

If this bit is crystal-clear, you'll be building production level apps in no time flat. Get it wrong, and you might waste hours of your time.

Prompting Cheat-Sheet

The Basics - Prompting Mindset

The most basic first step while working with Emergent is the two-brain approach.

Your Brain: The vision of the finished product, understanding user needs, business logic, priorities for development cycles.

Emergent's Brain: Technical depth, code patterns, end-to-end testing and optimization of code.

The moment you understand this separation (and start prompting the agent keeping it in mind), the app building process becomes streamlined.

Part 1: The Initial Prompt

General Rule of Thumb: Start with the "Why" and "Who"

Before writing the features you want in detail, explain the basic idea, why you're building it and for whom to Emergent.

For example:

I'm building a productivity app for busy entrepreneurs who struggle 
to track their daily tasks, mood, and expenses in one place. 
The goal is to help founders stay organized and maintain 
work-life balance while building their companies.

Core features needed:
1. Task management with drag-and-drop kanban board
2. Daily mood/energy journaling
3. Simple expense tracking

Let's start with the task management feature first.

Part 2: Iterating with the agent

Once the first prompt yields decent results, you might feel the app can be developed fully in the next prompt. It's important you do not list every feature you have thought of at this point.

Best Practices for Iterations:

1. Identify the most important features - what's the one feature your clients need the most?
2. List out 2-3 features that deliver the most value once your MVP and core feature is working flawlessly. (For help with troubleshooting your app, refer to the troubleshooting section.)
3. Always build in steps or iterations - let the agent build out one core pillar of the app before moving to the next!

Part 3: The Importance of Testing

The most important part of building an app is iterating. Once you implement a set of features, test the whole app thoroughly before adding any more features.

Here's the testing checklist:

Part 4: Thinking Mode with the agent

There are cases where you do not need to start building the app instantly, but rather want to discuss and brainstorm app ideas with the agent.

Here is the one prompt you need if you want your agent to be your thinking buddy instead of the code architect for a little while-

I'm considering adding team collaboration features, but I'm not sure about the approach. 
Let's discuss the options and trade-offs before writing any code.

Don't start coding yet - just help me think through this.

With that, we have covered the basics of how to talk to the agent effectively to see the best results in the shortest possible time. Here's a snapshot: