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Prompting Guide — Getting started

This quick guide helps you create effective prompts and set up Custom Instructions so ValorIDE consistently follows your team's style and security policies.

Custom Instructions: the extension's baseline behavior​

Custom instructions are global templates that the extension will follow across all tasks. They are a powerful way to encode team preferences and guardrails.

How to set them:

  1. Open VS Code → ValorIDE extension settings
  2. Find Custom Instructions and paste your rules

Use custom instructions for:

  • Enforcing coding style and naming conventions
  • Rejecting edits that expose secrets
  • Defining how tests and lints should be run

.valoriderules vs. Custom Instructions​

.valoriderules lives in the repository and is appended to your custom instructions. Use .valoriderules for project-wide constraints that should be enforced regardless of personal settings.

Example: use .valoriderules to block editing .env files or .pem keys.

Prompting tips​

  • Be specific about the expected deliverable — e.g. “Add tests that prove X” or “Create a small CLI wrapper”.
  • Attach context with @file or @folder instead of pasting whole files.
  • Break complex tasks into small steps and approve each one.

Examples (short)​

Goal: Fix test failure in login flow
Context: @file src/auth/login.ts, test output attached
Constraints: Keep API shape intact; add unit tests
Acceptance:
 - All tests pass
 - New tests cover error case

Next steps​

Continue to the more in-depth Prompt Engineering guide for browser-first execution patterns and anti-stall disciplines.