Guides · 8 min read
Five prompt patterns for production-ready components
Small habits that turn vague requests into typed, accessible, tested components you can merge the same day.
Kestrel is good at guessing, but it is great when you tell it what “done” looks like. These five patterns come from watching thousands of first prompts turn into merged pull requests.
1. Name the states
Instead of “a button”, ask for “a button with idle, loading and disabled states”. You will get the props, the spinner and the aria attributes in one go.
2. Point at a sibling
a pricing card like components/PlanCard.tsx, but with a yearly toggleReferencing an existing file is the fastest way to inherit spacing, tokens and naming.
3. Ask for the tests you would write
- “renders the empty state”
- “calls onSelect with the plan id”
- “is keyboard accessible”
4. Say what not to do
“No new dependencies” and “no inline styles” are short, cheap and remarkably effective.
5. Iterate on the diff, not the prompt
Once the first version lands, comment on the diff like you would on a teammate’s PR. Kestrel keeps the context and changes only what you asked about.
