Vibe Coding Prompts Library: Start Your Own in a File
The vibe coding prompts library worth having is your own: one file with the messages that already worked on your game. Lists from the internet help at the start, but only your own prompts know your game's names, rules and weak spots.
Which prompts are worth keeping?
Use a simple rule: a prompt goes in once it has worked twice, on two different days. Once could be luck. Twice means it does something reliable, and that it is worth the small effort of cleaning it up.
Next to each prompt, note what it is for and when it last worked. A library without dates turns into a drawer of old cables. You keep everything and trust nothing.
How does one prompt grow?
The real value lies in what your failures teach you. Here is one prompt for an invented puzzle game about tuning an old attic radio to find clues. Each version fixes what went wrong with the one before.
Version 1: "Add a new station." You got a station with no clue on it, so there was no reason to tune in.
Version 2: "Add a new station with a clue." The clue played once and was gone, because nothing saved it to your notebook.
Version 3:
Add a station called [name] at [frequency]. It plays [sound].
It gives the clue [text], and that clue goes into the notebook.
First show me on a diagram how it connects to the dial, the
notebook and the clues it depends on, then build from that.
It must not sit within 2 steps of another station.
No part of version 3 is clever writing. It is a memory of two bad evenings, turned into a few extra lines. That is why a stranger's library can never be as good as yours.
What should I fill first?
Six slots cover most of a project:
- Opening a session. What your AI should read before anything else.
- Adding one more of something. A level, enemy, station or scene, as in the example.
- Reporting a bug. Your best form for describing what went wrong.
- Tuning a feeling. How you ask for changes to speed or weight.
- Asking for a second opinion. What you send to a fresh chat.
- Closing a session. What gets written down before you stop.
Leave a slot empty until something has earned its place. A short library that you use beats a long one that you do not.
Where should it live?
Put it in a file called prompts.md in your project folder, so that your AI can read it too. Then you can just say: "Use the Add a station prompt from prompts.md with these values."
Once a month, delete whatever you have not used. Note which AI tool a prompt worked with, because a prompt written for one tool may need changes for another.
Can I use other people's prompts?
Yes, as a starting point, but read each one before you paste it. A copied prompt is a set of instructions for your AI, and you do not want to run anything you have not read. The blueprints here each come with a text you can start from, and the story pages have ones for plot and characters. Copy the idea, then make it yours by adding what your game has taught you.
Paste this to your AI
Start with a Mermaid diagram of my game's parts and their links, drawn from what you can see in the project. Then go back through this chat and find the messages of mine that led to something I kept in the game. Mark on the diagram which part each one changed.
For each one, add an entry to prompts.md:
- what it is for, in one line
- the text, cleaned up for reuse, with [brackets] for the parts that change
- what it produced in the game, and where I can see that
Only add a message if you can point to its result in the game today. If the result was later removed, or you cannot find it, leave the message out and list it at the end under "could not trace". Do not keep a prompt because it sounds good.
Or skip this and connect the MCP: your AI then finds all of this by itself.Connect the MCP
How to check it worked
- Follow one "where I can see that". Open the game and go there.
- Read the "could not trace" list. Do you remember any of it working? Is that part on the diagram?
- Try one entry in a new chat. Does it give the same kind of result without any extra help?
- Look again in a month. Which entries did you really use? Delete the rest.