Elevate Your Vibe Coding with AI, 10 Prompts for Enhanced Development Practices

In the dynamic landscape of software development, embracing vibe coding principles while harnessing the power of artificial intelligence can significantly enhance productivity and code quality. This blog post presents a curated list of 10  prompts that empower developers to utilize AI effectively in various aspects of their vibe coding workflow.

From generating system prompts that align with existing coding styles to providing high-level architectural overviews, these prompts are designed to facilitate smoother onboarding and improve overall project management. They also cover essential areas such as unit testing generation, exploring third-party solutions, and optimizing application performance—all while maintaining a strong focus on vibe coding principles.

Each prompt is accompanied by a detailed context that explains its purpose and benefits, making it easier for developers to integrate AI into their vibe coding practices. Whether you're a seasoned developer looking to refine your approach or a newcomer eager to learn, these prompts will serve as valuable tools in your coding arsenal.

Join us as we delve into these innovative prompts and discover how AI can transform your vibe coding process, reduce code debt, and ultimately lead to the creation of more robust and maintainable applications. Embrace the future of coding with AI as your ally, and elevate your vibe coding experience to new heights!

1. AI Security Audits

Prompt: Conduct a security audit of the following Laravel application code to identify vulnerabilities. Look for issues such as unsanitized user input, insecure API calls, exposed credentials in .env files, and the absence of authentication or authorization checks. Provide suggestions for code fixes or architectural changes to mitigate these vulnerabilities.

Context: AI can serve as an intelligent security assistant, examining your Laravel application for prevalent vulnerabilities like SQL injection, broken authentication, and insecure data handling. It can swiftly identify weak points in your code, recommend appropriate fixes, and explain the associated risks—making it an invaluable resource for developing safer, production-ready applications without the need for exhaustive manual reviews each time.

[X] Never trust an answer like this 100% if the question is security. Good starting point, and nothing more.

2. Improving App Performance

Prompt: Analyze this React application to identify potential performance issues. Investigate areas such as inefficient rendering of components, unnecessary re-renders due to state updates, heavy computations in the main thread, large bundle sizes from unoptimized imports, and unoptimized API calls using Axios. For each identified problem, provide specific suggestions for improvement.

Context: Identifying performance issues is crucial for enhancing user experience and ensuring scalability, but it can be time-consuming and easy to overlook. AI can rapidly scan the entire React codebase, detecting subtle inefficiencies and suggesting fixes instantly—offering a quicker and more comprehensive initial assessment than a manual review.

3. Generating Whole Applications / Features

Prompt: Create a fully-featured Todo application utilizing Laravel for the backend, Livewire for dynamic components, and Vue.js for the frontend. Ensure the application includes user authentication, CRUD operations, filtering tasks, and localStorage synchronization for offline access. Structure the code for scalability, maintaining a clear separation of controllers, models, and views. Adhere to clean code practices, with consistent naming conventions and comments where necessary.

Context: Whether you're initiating a new project or integrating complex features, AI can significantly expedite your development process without compromising code quality—provided you offer clear and precise guidance.

4. Unit Testing Generation

Prompt: Generate unit tests for the API endpoints in this Laravel application. Ensure that tests cover all CRUD operations for the Todo model, including validation checks and error handling. Use PHPUnit for testing and provide clear assertions to verify the expected outcomes.

Context: AI is capable of creating comprehensive unit tests for your Laravel application. You can review the generated tests to verify that all code paths are adequately covered. If necessary, you can request additional tests to ensure thorough validation and robustness of the application.

5. AI-Based Onboarding

Prompt: Provide a high-level managerial overview of the architecture of this Next.js application. Include details about the folder structure, routing mechanisms, data fetching strategies (like getStaticProps and getServerSideProps), and how API routes are organised.

Context: Navigating a new codebase can be daunting, but AI can streamline the process by quickly summarising key architectural insights. This prompt is designed to extract essential high-level information, enabling you to familiarise yourself with the project's structure and principles effectively, facilitating a smoother onboarding experience for Vibe Coding.

6. 3rd Party Solutions

Prompt: Before proceeding with any code, please provide a list of existing libraries, tools, or frameworks that can address this problem in a Laravel application. For each option, explain its functionality, outline the pros and cons, and indicate whether it is actively maintained. Only recommend a custom implementation if no reliable solutions are available.

Context: This prompt is invaluable as it helps you avoid reinventing the wheel. Instead of jumping straight into code generation, AI first identifies proven libraries or tools, such as Laravel Passport for API authentication or Spatie's Laravel Permission for role management, that can effectively solve your problem, saving time, minimising bugs, and enhancing maintainability.

7. AI Architecture Consulting

Prompt: I am looking to build a scalable application using React and Next.js. Before generating any code, please assist me in selecting the appropriate architecture and design decisions. Outline the key options for state management (e.g., Redux, Context API), routing structure, folder organisation, styling approach (e.g., CSS Modules, styled-components), and testing strategy (e.g., Jest, React Testing Library). For each option, provide a brief explanation of the pros and cons, and then prompt me to choose what best fits my needs. Once I make my selections, proceed to generate the base application structure accordingly.

Context: AI can serve as your architectural consultant before any code is written. Rather than jumping straight into development, it can guide you through essential decisions regarding state management strategies, folder organization, styling methods, and testing frameworks, explaining the advantages and disadvantages of each based on your objectives. This interactive approach ensures that the application built aligns with your long-term requirements for scalability, maintainability, and team collaboration.

8. Removing Code Debt in Laravel

Prompt: Refactor this Laravel codebase by reorganizing the controllers and models to follow the Single Responsibility Principle. Ensure that each controller handles a specific resource and that models are clearly defined with appropriate relationships. Remove any redundant code, such as duplicate methods or unused imports, and implement service classes where necessary to encapsulate business logic. Additionally, ensure that all methods are well-documented and adhere to naming conventions.

Context: AI excels at eliminating code debt and managing extensive refactoring tasks. It can efficiently identify areas of improvement in your Laravel application, reorganizing code for better maintainability and readability. By leveraging AI for this refactoring process, you can enhance the structure of your application, reduce complexity, and ensure that your code adheres to best practices, ultimately leading to a more robust and scalable application.

9. AI-Powered Search Engine

Prompt: Enumerate all the components and services utilized within this Laravel and Vue.js application.

Context: Coding AI excels not only in code generation but also in extracting intricate details from your project, functioning as an advanced search engine. This prompt allows you to efficiently gather comprehensive information about specific elements in your codebase, enhancing your understanding and facilitating better development practices.

10. Generating System Prompt

Prompt: Analyse the Laravel project's codebase to identify best practices, architectural decisions, and the established style guide. Based on this analysis, create a system prompt for Livewire that ensures AI-generated code adheres to the same style and structure.

Context: When starting a new project, understanding both the explicit and implicit coding conventions is crucial. This prompt empowers you to leverage AI to dissect the codebase and extract these conventions. The resulting system prompt will guide AI in your preferred IDE, ensuring that all generated code aligns with the existing coding standards and practices.

11. Fixing PHPStan Issues / Bonus

Prompt: Analyse the following PHP code and identify issues reported by PHPStan. Address problems such as type mismatches, undefined variables, incorrect return types, and any other violations of best practices. Provide specific code fixes for each issue identified, ensuring that the code adheres to PHPStan's level of strictness.

Context: PHPStan is an invaluable tool for maintaining code quality in PHP applications. By leveraging AI to analyse and fix the issues reported by PHPStan, you can enhance the robustness of your codebase, reduce potential bugs, and ensure compliance with best practices. This prompt allows you to systematically address and resolve static analysis issues, leading to cleaner and more maintainable code.