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Prompt examples for chat in VS Code

This article provides example prompts for chat in Visual Studio Code across different scenarios and agents. Use these examples as inspiration to craft effective prompts for your own development tasks.

If you are new to using chat in VS Code, learn more about getting started with chat or review best practices for prompt crafting.

General coding and technology questions

Use chat in VS Code to get quick answers about coding concepts, technology topics, and general programming questions.

What is a linked list?

Provide 3 ways to implement a search feature in React.

Explain the difference between async/await and promises.

Understanding and exploring your codebase

Use chat in VS Code to understand how your project works, locate specific functionality, or explore code relationships.

Explain how authentication works in #codebase

Where is the database connection string configured? #codebase

How do I build this #codebase?

Which testing framework is used for #calculator.test.js?

Code generation and editing

Use chat in VS Code to generate new code, add features, or modify existing functionality.

Add a login button and style it based on #styles.css

Create a meal-planning web app using React and Node.js

Refactor this code to use async/await

Testing and quality assurance

Use chat in VS Code to generate tests or fix failing tests.

Add unit tests for the user service.

Fix the failing tests #testFailure

Debugging and fixing issues

Use chat in VS Code to identify and fix problems in your code.

Fix the issues in #problems

Fix the failing tests #testFailure

Why is this function returning undefined?

Working with source control

Use chat in VS Code to work with your pending changes and generate release documentation.

Summarize the #changes

Generate release notes based on the #changes

Summarize the changes in #changes

Working with external resources

Use chat in VS Code to reference content from the web or GitHub repositories.

How do I use the 'useState' hook in react 18? #fetch https://18.react.dev/reference/react/useState#usage

Build an API endpoint to fetch address info, use the template from #githubRepo contoso/api-templates

What are the top #extensions for this workspace?

Terminal and command-line tasks

Use terminal inline chat to get help with shell commands and terminal operations.

How do I install npm packages?

List the top 5 largest files in the src directory

undo the last git commit

Working with Jupyter notebooks

Use chat in VS Code to create, edit, and work with Jupyter notebooks.

/newNotebook use pandas and seaborn to read and visualize the titanic dataset. Show key information from the dataset.

Create a notebook to read data from #housing.csv and plot the distribution of prices

Make sure the data is cleaned before visualizing and processing it

Show the correlation between different features in the dataset

Tips for crafting effective prompts

  • Be specific: Include details about what you want to accomplish, the technologies to use, and the expected output format.
  • Add context: Use #-mentions to reference files, symbols, or context variables like #codebase, #changes, or #problems.
  • Iterate: Start with a simple prompt and refine it based on the response. Ask follow-up questions to improve the results.
  • Break down complex tasks: Instead of asking for everything at once, break large tasks into smaller, manageable steps.

Learn more about best practices for crafting prompts and adding context to your prompts.

Related resources

12/10/2025