Bob DeLaurentis5d ago
David Smith

While I don't yet feel like I have fully settled on how the I'll end up using LLMs in my day-to-day programming tasks, I have found a handful of prompts which I repeatably find to be generally useful and applicable regardless of whether I'm manually or agentically programming.

These are for:
- SwiftUI Previews
- Realtime Documentation
- Newly Localizable Strings
- Testing Plans
- Bug Finding
- Draft Release Notes

Detailed here: https://david-smith.org/blog/2026/03/20/generally-useful-prompts/

Mar 20 at 9:08amIvory for Mac
Show threadUhl Albert5d ago

@_Davidsmith Nice list! One small addition I use around release notes: commit messages.

LLMs write far more comprehensive (yet still concise) commit messages than I ever would.

Then I use a TestFlight release note skill that looks at all changes since the last `testflight` tag and pulls out the user-facing ones into a draft when I’m ready to push.

Show threadNeil Hargreaves5d ago
@_Davidsmith great post, great food for thought. Are you using the Codex.app? I'm hesitant to switch it on in Xcode because the setting is currently at the application and not project level.
Show threadDavid Smith5d ago
@glotcha I use both the Codex app and the Xcode integration, depending on what I'm doing. For localized, small changes I find the Xcode integrations is best. For large, sweeping analytics tasks I find the Codex app is best. But all very fluid and ever changing.
Show threadNick Rogers5d ago
@_Davidsmith Bug finding, documentation and checking unit test coverage have been consistently good across many languages for me. Automation of boring grunt work is a joy to behold.
Show threadHunter Hillegas5d ago
@_Davidsmith For the bug finding, have you also tried the built in Codex code review?