Writing good prompts
How to describe what you want so the first build lands close, and how to steer it after.
A prompt is what you type to Yorki. The clearer it is, the closer the first build lands and the fewer changes you need afterwards. You do not need technical words: describe the app the way you would describe it to a person who will build it for you.
The first prompt
A good first prompt answers four questions:
- Who is it for? "For the members of my running club", "for my customers", "just for me".
- What do they do with it? Book a class, log a run, browse a menu, track invoices.
- What pages does it need? A home page, a calendar, a sign-up form, an admin page.
- What should it remember? Bookings, accounts, uploaded photos. This tells Yorki your app needs cloud.
| Vague | Specific |
|---|---|
| A website for my bakery | A website for my bakery with photos of the shop, our opening hours, a menu with prices and a form to order a custom cake |
| A habit tracker | A habit tracker where I add habits, tick them off each day and see my current streak for each one |
| An app for my team | An internal tool where my team logs support requests, assigns each one to a person and marks it as solved, with a list of open requests on the home page |
Say how it should look
If you have a style in mind, say so: "calm and minimal", "dark with neon accents", "warm and handmade", a colour such as "deep forest green", or a font style such as "a classic serif". If you say nothing, Yorki offers a few design choices before the first build. See Questions and design.
Asking for changes
After the first build, ask for one change at a time and say exactly where and what:
- Instead of "fix the header", write "On the home page, make the header stay at the top while scrolling."
- Instead of "make it better", write "Make the prices on the menu page larger and put them on the right."
- Instead of "add login", write "Let people create an account and sign in. Only signed-in people can book a class."
For a bigger change that touches several pages, write a plan first in Plan mode. See Build, Chat and Plan.
Reporting a problem to Yorki
When something does not work, describe three things: what you did, what you expected and what happened instead. For example: "When I press Book on a class, nothing happens. I expected a confirmation message."
If the preview showed an error, the details travel with your next message automatically. You can also press Fix it on the error notice. See When something goes wrong.
Screenshots and images
In Build mode you can attach images with the + button or by pasting them: a screenshot of a design you like, a sketch, your logo or product photos. Up to 3 images per request, each up to 5 MB, as JPEG, PNG or WebP.
Long prompts
A request can be up to 20,000 characters. If you paste a prompt written with another AI assistant, Yorki builds what it describes and ignores advice in it that was meant for you, such as instructions about which tool to use.
Useful habits
- Ask questions in Chat. "How does sign-up work in my app?" is a question, not a change. Chat answers it without touching your app.
- Keep rules in the specification. If something must always be true, such as "prices are always in euros", write it in your specification. Every request reads it first.
- Check the preview before asking for more. Small steps make it easy to go back to a version that worked.
Last updated 12 October 2026