AI Prompts for Coding: GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Replit (2026 Guide)

Prompt Principles These Tools Expect

GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Replit all respond best to single, specific tasks, with clear context and constraints. Official guides recommend:

• Break work into small steps instead of "build my whole app"
• Provide surrounding code, file names, and examples (input → output)
• Specify language, libraries, types, and edge cases you care about

A reusable pattern for your prompts:

"You are an experienced [language/framework] engineer.
Task: [generate / refactor / explain / debug].
Context: [repo description, file, snippet].
Requirements: [libraries, style, performance, edge cases].
Output: [function signature, tests, comments, or explanation only]."

Below are ready-to-paste prompt ideas grouped by GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Replit Ghostwriter / Replit Agent.

GitHub Copilot Prompts (Editor & Copilot Chat)

GitHub's own docs emphasize comments above function stubs and focused chat questions.

Code generation & stubs

• "Write a TypeScript function paginate<T>(items: T[], page: number, perPage: number) that returns an object with data, total, page, and pageCount. Handle out-of-range page numbers gracefully (clamp to valid range)."
• "In this file, add an Express middleware requireAuth that reads a JWT from the Authorization header, verifies it with process.env.JWT_SECRET, attaches the decoded user to req.user, and returns 401 on failure."
• "Python: Given a list of transaction objects with fields: id, amount, currency, created_at, add a function that groups them by currency and returns totals per currency as a dict."

Refactoring & improvement

• "Refactor this function to be more readable and testable. Extract helper functions where it reduces nesting, and add type hints. Don't change external behavior."
• "Improve this React component to avoid unnecessary re-renders. Use useMemo / useCallback where appropriate, and explain briefly in comments why each optimization helps."

Debugging & tests

• "This function occasionally throws in production. Identify potential issues and propose fixes. Focus on null/undefined, race conditions, and async errors."
• "Write unit tests for parseConfig using Jest. Cover: valid config, missing optional fields, invalid types, and throwing on required missing fields. Use AAA structure."

Explanations & documentation

• "Explain what this Rust function does, step by step, including ownership and lifetimes implications. Assume the reader is new to Rust."
• "Add comprehensive JSDoc comments to this public API, documenting params, return types, and possible errors."

Cursor AI Prompts (Rules, Chat, and In-Editor)

Cursor is designed around prompt-driven edits and repo-aware tasks.

Code generation within a repo

• "Inside this Next.js app, create a usePaginatedQuery React hook in hooks/usePaginatedQuery.ts that wraps our existing apiClient. It should accept endpoint, params, and pageSize, and return an object with properties: data, isLoading, error, loadMore, and hasMore. Use the same error-handling pattern as in hooks/useQuery.ts."
• "Generate a Django model Order in orders/models.py with fields: id (UUID primary key), user (FK), total_amount (Decimal), currency, status (choices: pending, paid, cancelled), created_at, updated_at. Add a method mark_paid that records paid timestamp and status."

Refactor / multi-file changes

• "Refactor this repo to replace requests with httpx while preserving all behavior. Update imports, session handling, and any async code accordingly. Show me a diff before applying."
• "In this project, introduce a logging module with a get_logger(name) helper. Replace ad-hoc print statements in the services package with structured logs (level, message, context dict). Keep style consistent with existing logging usage if any."

Debugging & migration

• "We're getting intermittent 'connection reset' errors from this HTTP client. Inspect client.py and any call sites to identify likely causes (timeouts, retries, connection pooling). Propose changes and show patches."
• "Migrate this React Router v5 code to React Router v6. Update route definitions, Switch/Routes, and hooks (useHistory → useNavigate). Ensure type safety with TypeScript."

Replit Ghostwriter / Replit Agent Prompts

Replit emphasizes clear, single-feature prompts with explicit constraints.

Feature-by-feature building

• "Set up a basic full-stack project for a todo app in Replit using Node.js + Express backend and vanilla JS frontend. Include routes to create, list, update, and delete todos stored in Replit Database. No authentication yet."
• "Add user signup and login endpoints to this existing Express app. Requirements: /signup and /login routes, Password hashing with bcrypt, JWT-based auth with Authorization: Bearer header, Middleware to protect /todos routes."

Cross-Tool Prompt Patterns (Works in All Three)

• "Set the stage" prompt: "We're building a [type of app] using [stack]. Outline the core components, folders, and data models we'll need. Then scaffold minimal starter code or stubs for each major part, following best practices for this stack."
• Single, specific task prompts: "Write a function normalizePhoneNumber in [language] that accepts various phone formats and returns E.164, assuming default country [X] when missing. Include error handling and unit tests in the same file."
• Explain and improve prompts: "Review this function and: Explain what it does in 2–3 sentences, Point out any bugs, edge cases, or security concerns, Suggest an improved version with comments."

Best Practices for Coding Tools

• One task at a time. Ask for one function, one refactor, or one bugfix—huge multi-step asks lead to weaker results.
• Be specific and short. Describe exact behavior, signatures, libraries, and edge cases without writing a whole essay.
• Always give context. Include relevant code, filenames, or a brief repo goal so the tool can fit into your architecture.
• Iterate & refine. If the first answer isn't right, rephrase, add constraints, or split the task, instead of abandoning the tool.
• Treat AI as a pair programmer. You stay responsible for designing APIs, reviewing code, writing tests, and checking security; AI accelerates the grunt work.

FAQ: AI Prompts for Coding