5 AI Coding Prompts That Changed How I Ship Software

1|--- 2|title: "5 AI Coding Prompts That Changed How I Ship Software" 3|published: true 4|description: "After shipping 10+ projects with AI assistance, here are the 5 prompts that actually save me hours every week" 5|tags: ai, productivity, programming, webdev 6|--- 7| 8|After a year of using AI coding agents daily, I've learned one thing the hard way: the prompt is the product. 9| 10|A vague prompt gets you boilerplate. A sharp prompt gets you production code. 11| 12|Here are the 5 prompts I use every day that actually move the needle. 13| 14|--- 15| 16|## 1. The Context Sandwich 17| 18|Most developers dump a task and expect magic. Instead: 19| 20| 21|CONTEXT: This is a Next.js 14 app with Prisma + PostgreSQL. 22|I have a schema for "orders" with status enum (pending, paid, shipped, cancelled). 23|GOAL: Create an API route that filters orders by status, with pagination (20 per page). 24|CONSTRAINTS: Must use cursor-based pagination. Must include total count. 25|OUTPUT: Full route c