AI Prompt Notes
Russell Bateman
August 2025
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In 2025, I began using Cursor AI because my workplace began to provide it.
There is productive wizardry in how prompts are written.
The Golden Rule: Be specific!
"Create a button." (instead:)
"Create a blue button with white text that says 'Submit' and changes
to a darker blue when you hover over it. Use HTML and CSS."
Five Simple Rules
- Tell the AI what you're building; explain the bigger picture.
- Mention your skill level; it will adjust its explanations.
- Specify the programming language and tools you expect it to use.
- When it comes back with something, ask for explanations and ask questions
if you don't understand something.
- Be clear about the output. Tell it exactly how you want the answer
to be couched, formatted, etc.
Here's an example
"Write me a method."
Better: "I'm learning Java. Create classes that:
- Define a person with fields for name and age.
- Create a method that takes a person's name and age as input.
- Returns whether they can vote (18+ years).
- Include comments explaining how the code works.
- Write a JUnit test that asks for different ages."
Another example
"This code doesn't work; fix it for me."
Better: "I'm a beginning Java coder and this code isn't working.
(post the code)
I see an error when I run it:
(post error message here)
Can you fix it, then explain what was wrong?"