The Developer Prompt Formula

For software work, vague prompts produce generic answers because the model has to guess your framework version, architecture, database, coding standards, and hidden constraints. The fix is to provide the smallest useful amount of real context.

Prompt part	What to include	.NET example
Role	Tell the model what engineering lens to use.	Act as a senior ASP.NET Core backend engineer and code reviewer.
Task	Describe what you want built, fixed, reviewed, or explained.	Create POST /api/orders with validation and EF Core persistence.
Stack	Give app type, .NET version, database, ORM, testing tools.	.NET 9 Web API, EF Core, SQL Server, xUnit, FluentAssertions.
Architecture	State the current project style.	Clean Architecture: Api, Application, Domain, Infrastructure.
Relevant code	Paste only the code that matters.	Controller, service method, DbContext, entity, error stack trace.
Constraints	Make hidden rules explicit.	No extra packages, async I/O, no entity exposure, preserve response shape.