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The art of prompting

Gainable understands natural language, but how you describe things affects what you get. This guide will help you write prompts that produce exactly what you want.

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The golden rule

Be specific about your data, clear about relationships, and explicit about features.The more specific your prompt, the more accurate your app.

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Five key principles

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1. Name your fields explicitly

Tell Gainable exactly what data you want to track. 
Build a contact manager with:
- Name, email, phone number
- Company they work for
- Job title
- Last contacted date
Why this matters: When you name fields, Gainable creates exactly those fields. When you’re vague, it has to guess.

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2. Describe relationships

If data is connected, say how. 
Build a CRM where:
- Companies have a name, industry, and size
- Contacts belong to a company
- Deals are linked to both a company and a contact
Common relationship patterns:
  • “X belongs to Y” - Each X is linked to one Y
  • “X has many Y” - One X can have multiple Y items
  • “X and Y are linked” - They reference each other

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3. Describe the user journey

Explain how people will actually use the app. 
Users should be able to:
1. Create a new project
2. Add tasks to that project
3. Assign tasks to team members
4. Mark tasks as complete
5. See a progress dashboard

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4. Request features by name

Use specific feature names when you know what you want.
Instead of…Say…
”Show the data graphically""Add a pie chart showing deals by status"
"Make it organized""Add a kanban board with columns"
"Let people talk""Add a team chat"
"Make it sortable""Let me drag to reorder items”

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5. Iterate incrementally

Build your app step by step instead of all at once.
1

Start with the basics

“Build a task tracker with title, description, and status”
2

Add more fields

“Add due date and priority to tasks”
3

Add visualization

“Add a dashboard with a chart showing tasks by status”
4

Add advanced features

“Add a kanban board view”
Incremental building is more reliable than trying to specify everything upfront. Each step is smaller and easier for Gainable to get right.

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Prompt structure

A well-structured prompt typically has three parts:

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1. What you’re building (the entity)

Build a [thing] tracker...
Create a [thing] management system...
I need to track [things]...

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2. What data it stores (the fields)

...with [field 1], [field 2], and [field 3]
...including name, status, and due date
...that has title, description, priority, and assignee

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3. What you can do with it (the features)

...and a dashboard showing totals
...with a kanban board for status
...where I can filter by date

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Complete example

Here’s a well-structured prompt that combines all principles: 
Build a customer support ticket system where:

Tickets have:
- Title and description
- Priority (low, medium, high, urgent)
- Status (new, in progress, resolved, closed)
- Customer email
- Assigned agent
- Created date

I should be able to:
- Create new tickets
- Assign tickets to agents
- Update ticket status
- Add comments to tickets

Show a dashboard with:
- Total open tickets count
- Tickets by priority (pie chart)
- Tickets by status (bar chart)
- Recent tickets list

Use a kanban board for the main ticket view, organized by status.
This prompt is specific about data, clear about features, and describes the user journey.

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What to avoid

These patterns lead to unpredictable results:
Don’tDo instead
”Make me a CRM""Track deals with company, amount, status, and close date"
"Add some charts""Add a pie chart showing deals by status"
"Make it pretty""Use the cupcake theme"
"Like Salesforce”Describe the specific features you need
Everything in one promptBuild incrementally

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Learn more

Best practices

Detailed dos and don’ts

Examples

Real prompts you can copy

Common patterns

Templates for common app types