Prompting & Prompt Library

Using Prompts

Prompts are an essential part of interacting with AI assistants in Zed. They help guide the AI's responses and ensure you get the most relevant and useful information.

Every new context will start with the default prompt, which can be customized.

Remember that effective prompting is an iterative process. Experiment with different prompt structures and wordings to find what works best for your specific needs and the model you're using.

Here are some tips for using prompts effectively:

  1. Be specific: Clearly state what you want the AI to do or explain.
  2. Provide context: Include relevant information about your project or problem.
  3. Use examples: If applicable, provide examples to illustrate your request.
  4. Break down complex tasks: For multi-step problems, consider breaking them into smaller, more manageable prompts.

Prompt Library

The Prompt Library is an interface for writing and managing prompts. Like other text-driven UIs in Zed, it is a full editor with syntax highlighting, keyboard shortcuts, etc.

You can use the inline assistant right in the prompt editor, allowing you to automate and rewrite prompts.

Opening the Prompt Library

  1. Open the assistant panel.
  2. Click on the menu in the top right corner.
  3. Select "Prompt Library" from the dropdown.

You can also use the prompt-library: toggle command.

Managing Prompts

Once a prompt is selected, you can edit it directly in the editor. Its title can be changed from the editor title bar as well.

Prompts can be duplicated, deleted, or added to the default prompt using the buttons in the prompt editor.

Creating a Prompt

To create a prompt, simply open the Prompt Library and click the "+" button. Prompts are stored locally and can be accessed from the library at any time.

Having a series of prompts specifically tailored to prompt engineering can also help you write consistent and effective prompts.

The process of writing and refining prompts commonly called "prompt engineering".

More on prompt engineering:

Editing the Default Prompt

Zed allows you to customize the default prompt used in new context editors. Or to be more precise, it uses a series of prompts that are combined to form the default prompt.

A default prompt might look something like:

[-] Default
  [+] Today's date
  [+] You are an expert
  [+] Don't add comments

Each of the above prompts can be individually expanded, and since Zed's assistant is all text, they can also be edited directly. Edits here will not propagate to the saved prompts.

You can add prompts to the default prompt by clicking the icon in the top right (the "sparkle" icon) of the prompt editor. This will add the prompt to the default prompt.

Changes to the default prompt will not affect existing contexts. You can remove the default prompt and manually re-add it with /default to update an existing context.

Default prompts will show at the top of the prompt list, and will be included with every new context.

You can manually add the default prompt using the /default command.

Note: Remember, commands are only evaluated when the context is created, so a command like /now won't continuously update, or /file commands won't keep their contents up to date.

Commands in Prompts

Commands can be used in prompts to insert dynamic content or perform actions. For example, if you want to create a prompt where it is important for the model to know the date, you can use the /now command to insert the current date.

Note: Slash commands in prompts must be on their own line.

See the Commands docs for more information on commands, and what slash commands are available.

Example:

You are an expert Rust engineer. The user has asked you to review their project and answer some questions.

Here is some information about their project:

/file Cargo.toml

In the above example, the /file command is used to insert the contents of the Cargo.toml file (or all Cargo.toml files present in the project) into the prompt.

Nesting Prompts

Similar to adding prompts to the default prompt, you can nest prompts within other prompts with the /prompt command.

You might want to nest prompts to:

  • Create templates on the fly
  • Break collections like docs or references into smaller, mix-and-matchable parts
  • Create variants of a similar prompt (e.g., Async Rust - Tokio vs. Async Rust - Async-std)

Example:

Title: Zed-Flavored Rust

## About Zed

/prompt Zed: Zed (a prompt about what Zed is)

## Rust - Zed Style

/prompt Rust: Async - Async-std (zed doesn't use tokio)
/prompt Rust: Zed-style Crates (we have some unique conventions)
/prompt Rust - Workspace deps (bias towards reusing deps from the workspace)

The (text) above are comments and are not part of the prompt.

Note: While you technically can nest a prompt within itself, we wouldn't recommend it (in the strongest of terms.) Use at your own risk!

By using nested prompts, you can create modular and reusable prompt components that can be combined in various ways to suit different scenarios.

Advanced Concepts

Prompt Templates

Zed uses prompt templates to power internal assistant features, like the terminal assistant, or the content prompt used in the inline assistant.

Zed has the following internal prompt templates:

  • content_prompt.hbs: Used for generating content in the editor.
  • terminal_assistant_prompt.hbs: Used for the terminal assistant feature.
  • edit_workflow.hbs: Used for generating the edit workflow prompt.
  • step_resolution.hbs: Used for generating the step resolution prompt.

At this point it is unknown if we will expand templates further to be user-creatable.

Overriding Templates

Note: It is not recommended to override templates unless you know what you are doing. Editing templates will break your assistant if done incorrectly.

Zed allows you to override the default prompts used for various assistant features by placing custom Handlebars (.hbs) templates in your ~/.config/zed/prompts/templates directory.

The following templates can be overridden:

  1. content_prompt.hbs: Used for generating content in the editor. Format:

    You are an AI programming assistant. Your task is to
{{#if is_insert}}insert{{else}}rewrite{{/if}}
{{content_type}}{{#if language_name}} in {{language_name}}{{/if}}
based on the following context and user request. Context:
{{#if is_truncated}}
  [Content truncated...]
{{/if}}
{{document_content}}
{{#if is_truncated}}
  [Content truncated...]
{{/if}}

User request:
{{user_prompt}}

{{#if rewrite_section}}
  Please rewrite the section enclosed in
  <rewrite_this></rewrite_this>
  tags.
{{else}}
  Please insert your response at the
  <insert_here></insert_here>
  tag.
{{/if}}

Provide only the
{{content_type}}
content in your response, without any additional explanation.

  2. terminal_assistant_prompt.hbs: Used for the terminal assistant feature. Format:

    You are an AI assistant for a terminal emulator. Provide helpful responses to
user queries about terminal commands, file systems, and general computer
usage. System information: - Operating System:
{{os}}
- Architecture:
{{arch}}
{{#if shell}}
  - Shell:
  {{shell}}
{{/if}}
{{#if working_directory}}
  - Current Working Directory:
  {{working_directory}}
{{/if}}

Latest terminal output:
{{#each latest_output}}
  {{this}}
{{/each}}

User query:
{{user_prompt}}

Provide a clear and concise response to the user's query, considering the
given system information and latest terminal output if relevant.

  3. edit_workflow.hbs: Used for generating the edit workflow prompt.

  4. step_resolution.hbs: Used for generating the step resolution prompt.

Note: Be sure you want to override these, as you'll miss out on iteration on our built-in features. This should be primarily used when developing Zed.

You can customize these templates to better suit your needs while maintaining the core structure and variables used by Zed. Zed will automatically reload your prompt overrides when they change on disk.

Consult Zed's assets/prompts directory for current versions you can play with.