Prompting guidelines

The quality of Naia Build’s output is directly dependent on the quality of the instructions it receives. This page covers the principles and practices that produce reliable, accurate generation, and the common patterns that lead to corrective iterations.

Preparation before prompting

The most effective prompting decisions are made before you open the Chat tab. Defining the following upfront reduces misaligned output and preserves the session iteration budget for building rather than correcting:

The business process the application supports
The user types who will interact with the application
The key data entities involved and their core fields
Any specific constraints — offline support, device type, SAP integration, specific component types, or branding requirements

Constraints in particular should be stated explicitly. Naia does not infer requirements that are not present in the prompt or the application context. An offline requirement added after an application has been scaffolded requires more corrective work than one stated at the outset.

Prompt structure

Prompts that produce reliable output consistently address the following:

Element Description Example

Element	Description	Example
What	The component, feature, or change being requested	`Create a list view`
Where	The location within the application	`On the Work Orders page`
Data	The data source or entity to reference	`From the GET /workorders operation`
Behavior	Interaction, validation, or logic required	`Sortable by status, with offline support`
Constraints	Platform, device, or design requirements	`Using a card layout with 8px rounded corners`

What

The component, feature, or change being requested

Create a list view

Where

The location within the application

On the Work Orders page

Data

The data source or entity to reference

From the GET /workorders operation

Behavior

Interaction, validation, or logic required

Sortable by status, with offline support

Constraints

Platform, device, or design requirements

Using a card layout with 8px rounded corners

Not every prompt requires all five elements. A styling change requires different inputs than a data-bound component. The principle is that each element present in a prompt reduces the amount Naia must infer, and reduces the likelihood of misaligned output.

Well-structured prompt example:

On the Work Orders page, create a list view displaying work order ID, status, and assigned technician from the GET /workorders API operation. The list should be sortable by status and function in offline mode.

Prompt example likely to require corrective iterations:

Make a work orders list.

Component context

When a prompt targets a specific UI element, select the component using Smart Inspect before submitting the prompt. The selected component becomes the active context for the Chat tab request. This eliminates the need to describe which element is being addressed and reduces the risk of changes being applied to the wrong component.

For visual changes that are difficult to describe precisely in text, Smart Inspect also supports drag-selection to add to chat. An annotated drag-selection attached to a prompt gives Naia Build explicit visual context alongside the text instruction.

Scope per prompt

Prompts addressing multiple unrelated changes in a single instruction produce less consistent results than sequential, focused prompts. Each prompt should address one concern. The result should be reviewed before the next prompt is submitted. This also means that if a generation step produces an unexpected result, the revert point in the History tab is clean and specific.

Styling and branding prompts

Visual changes applied through prompting are most reliable when specific values are provided rather than relative or subjective descriptions.

Less reliable More reliable

Less reliable	More reliable
`Make the header bigger`	`Set the header font size to 18px`
`Use the brand blue`	`Apply primary colour #2E5FA3"`
`Add some spacing`	`Add 16px padding to all card components`
`Make it look more modern`	`Apply 8px border radius and a subtle drop shadow to all list items`

Make the header bigger

Set the header font size to 18px

Use the brand blue

Apply primary colour #2E5FA3"

Add some spacing

Add 16px padding to all card components

Make it look more modern

Apply 8px border radius and a subtle drop shadow to all list items

Where a consistent style needs to be applied across multiple components, establish the style on one component first, verify it, then use the right-click copy and paste style actions to propagate it, rather than prompting for broad styling changes across the entire application in a single step.

Offline support

Applications intended to function in offline or low-connectivity environments should have this requirement stated in the initial prompt. Offline support involves IndexedDB storage and synchronization logic that is more straightforward to generate from the outset than to retrofit onto an existing application structure.