Writing Question Prompts
How to get the best answers from Unblocked
You can ask Unblocked all sorts of questions about your application – about the code, the context behind specific architectural decisions, the status of open issues from your issue tracker, and more.
Using Unblocked
Unblocked is available wherever you work:
Getting Answers from Unblocked
Unblocked relies on natural language prompts as inputs. Your prompts can be formatted as questions or statements. For example, you might ask Unblocked about the purpose of a particular component or tell it to explain how a specific service was implemented. In addition to the specifics of your prompt, Unblocked also takes into account the parts of the codebase you typically work on and what code you have open in your IDE when providing an answer.
In addition to receiving prompts from you, Unblocked will also suggest prompts that you can ask as follow ups to your questions. You can click on these prompts to explore a topic more deeply.
Tips for Writing Prompts
- Be specific - include names, Issue and Pull Request numbers, and URLs in your question.
- Clearly state what you need help with - for example: “Explain how this function works” or “Debug this error.”
- Include relevant code to give context about your question - you can paste code directly into the prompt box to ask about it. If you are in your IDE and have questions about specific pieces of code - directly highlight those lines to ask about them.
- Include what you think should happen - for example, if you’re asking about the purpose or functionality, be clear about what you intend the code to do, like “This function is supposed to calculate the factorial of a number.”
- Go beyond what - ask Unblocked why, where, and how questions to get a more complete answer.
- Ask for a step-by-step explanation - if you need detailed understanding of the sequence of a task.
- Use suggested follow-up questions - if you need to understand an answer more deeply, you can keep asking Unblocked to clarify further.
Example Prompts
Here are examples of questions you can ask Unblocked for easy reference as you get started. Simply replace the placeholder text for specific files, functions, components, and other examples with your own text.
Understand your codebase
Tell me about the 'Foo' repository.
What frameworks, tools, and technologies do we use?
What does the 'Foo' component do?
What dependencies does the 'Foo' project have?
What are the testing strategies we use?
What is the schema for the github_issue table?
What coding standards and conventions does the 'Foo' project follow?
We have a React hook where you can determine if the user is in light or dark mode, what is it?
Can you explain how the 'Foo_layout' hook is used and why it is chosen over 'Foo'?
Why did we decide to use 'electron-Foo'?
Explain how we implemented the 'Foo' service.
How do I run our landing page locally?
How do I add a default text in the 'Foo' method?
Verify the impact of a change
Can you delete a payment plan with active subscriptions?
How will this change affect the integration with other modules?
What are the consequences of allowing [Foo] dataset deletion?
Is there a place where a 'Foo' is created in the code?
Which APIs are consumed by 'Foo-page-api'?
What's the production endpoint url for the 'Foo' pipeline?
Check the status of open work
Can you summarize this issue for me? 'https://github.com/AcmeCorp/front-end/issues/993'
What is the status of this issue 'https://linear.app/project/issue/TSK-1111/db-perf'?
Who is working on the Jira issue 'AB-8888'?
Help me write an epic for this Jira ticket 'EAM-255'
What has changed since last week?
What changes did we make to the 'Foo-services' repo yesterday?
What is Lucca working on?
Who does Sonali work with the most?
Which Jira user stories are assigned to me?
Summarize 'PR #425'
Explore and edit ideas
How can we simplify the dependencies for the 'Foo' module?
How can I speed up the page load time?
How can we best support both React 16 and React 18 in this repo?
Make this code snippet more efficient.
Write a unit test for this change.
Find an expert
Who wrote 'foo.js'?
Who knows the most about 'FooService'?
Who do I talk to about code signing?
Who recently worked on the 'Foo' component and what changes did they make?