Building Apps
Example Prompts
15 real prompts organized by category, from vague to great.
Prompts that get great results
The quality of your prompt has a big impact on the quality of the output. Here are real prompts organized by category, each shown at three levels of specificity. Use these as starting points or templates for your own ideas.
Productivity
⚠ Bad
"A to-do list app."
Good
"A to-do list app where tasks can have due dates and priority levels. Shows overdue tasks in red."
Great
"A minimal daily planner. Clean white background, black typography. Left sidebar shows the week at a glance. Main area shows today's tasks with a checkbox, time estimate, and optional note. Tasks can be dragged to reorder. At the top, a motivational progress bar shows how many tasks are done. No complexity — just focus."
⚠ Bad
"A habit tracker."
Good
"A habit tracker that shows a streak counter for each habit. Dark theme with colored icons."
Great
"A habit tracker app with a dark background and green accents. Home screen shows today's habits as large tappable cards — each shows the habit name, an emoji icon, and current streak. Tapping marks it done and plays a satisfying animation. Below the cards, a calendar grid shows the last 30 days with green dots for completed days. Simple settings screen to add or remove habits."
Social
⚠ Bad
"A social media app."
Good
"A social app for sharing book recommendations with friends. Users can post books they've read with a short review."
Great
"A book recommendation feed. Warm off-white background, serif typography. Cards show the book cover image, title, author, a star rating (1–5), and a short 3-sentence review. At the top, a horizontal scrollable list of genre filters: Fiction, Non-fiction, Business, Sci-fi. Tapping a card expands it to show a longer review and a 'Want to Read' button. Clean and editorial — like a magazine."
E-commerce
⚠ Bad
"An online store."
Good
"A product landing page for a premium coffee brand. Shows the products, pricing, and a buy button."
Great
"A premium coffee brand landing page. Dark background, warm cream typography. Hero section with a full-width image, headline 'The World's Best Coffee, Delivered', and a 'Shop Now' CTA. Below: three product cards with photo, name, origin, roast level, and price. A 'How It Works' section with 3 icons and short copy. Testimonials from real customers at the bottom. Elegant and minimal — like a luxury brand."
Tools
⚠ Bad
"A dashboard."
Good
"A SaaS analytics dashboard that shows user signups, revenue, and churn by month."
Great
"A SaaS metrics dashboard. Dark sidebar navigation with logo at the top, links for Overview, Users, Revenue, and Settings. Main area has 4 stat cards at the top: MRR, new signups this month, churn rate, and active users. Below: a line chart showing MRR over the last 12 months, and a table of the 10 most recent signups with name, plan, and join date. Professional and clean — like Linear's design language."
💡 The pattern
Great prompts answer: What does it do? What does it look like? What are the screens? How does a user move through it? Reference a design aesthetic or real product if it helps ("like Notion", "like a Bloomberg terminal", "like a luxury brand").