I've been noticing a pattern recently among Senior/Staff engineers when using ChatGPT: The output is usually correct, but it's fundamentally incomplete. It skips the crucial senior steps like security considerations, NFRs, Root Cause Analysis, and structured testing.

It dawned on me: We’re prompting for a patch, but we should be prompting for a workflow.

I wrote up a quick article detailing the 3 biggest mistakes I was making, and sharing the structured prompt formulas that finally fixed the problem. These prompts are designed to be specialist roles that must return professional artifacts.

Here are 3 high-impact examples from the article (they are all about forcing structure):

1. Debugging: Stop asking for a fix. Ask for a Root Cause, The Fix, AND a Mandatory Regression Test. (The fix is worthless without the test).
2. System Design: Stop asking for a service description. Ask for a High-Level Design (HLD) that includes Mermaid Diagram Code and a dedicated Scalability Strategy section. This forces architecture, not just a list of services.
3. Testing: Stop asking for Unit Tests. Ask for a Senior Software Engineer in Test role that must include a Mocking Strategy and a list of 5 Edge Cases before writing the code.

The shift from "give me code" to "follow this senior workflow" is the biggest leap in prompt engineering for developers right now.

"You can read the full article and instantly download the 15 FREE prompts via the easily clickable link posted in the comments below! 👇"

==edit==
Few you asked me to put the prompts in this post, so here they are:

—–

Prompt #1: Error Stack Trace Analyzer

Act as a Senior Node.js Debugging Engineer.

TASK: Perform a complete root cause analysis and provide a safe, tested fix.

INPUT: Error stack trace: [STACK TRACE] 

Relevant code snippet: [CODE]

OUTPUT FORMAT: Return the analysis using the following mandatory sections, 
using a Markdown code block for the rewritten code and test
Root Cause
Failure Location
The Fix: The corrected, safe version of the code (in a code block).
Regression Test: A complete, passing test case to prevent 
recurrence (in a code block).

——

Prompt #2 : High-Level System Design (HLD) Generator

Act as a Principal Solutions Architect.

TASK: Generate a complete High-Level Design (HLD), f
ocusing on architectural patterns and service decomposition.

INPUT: Feature Description: [DESCRIPTION] | 
Key Non-Functional Requirements: [NFRs, e.g., "low latency," "99.99% uptime"]

OUTPUT FORMAT: Return the design using clear Markdown headings.

Core Business Domain & Services

Data Flow Diagram (Mermaid Code) (in a code block) ****[Instead of MERMAID you can use tool of your choice, Mermaid code worked best for me]

Data Storage Strategy (Service-to-Database mapping, Rationale)

Scalability & Availability Strategy

Technology Stack Justification

—–

Prompt #3: Unit Test Generator (Jest / Vitest)

Act as a Senior Software Engineer in Test.

INPUT: Function or component: [CODE] | Expected behavior: [BEHAVIOR]

RETURN:

List of Test Cases (Must include at least 5 edge cases).

Mocking Strategy (What external dependencies will be mocked and why).

Full Test File (Jest or Vitest) in a code block.

Areas of Untestable Code (Where is the code brittle or too coupled?).

==edit==

Curious what you all think—what's the highest-signal, most "senior level" output you've been able to get from an LLM recently?