Prompting turns your ideas into applications in Aha! Builder. The way you phrase a request shapes what Elle, the AI assistant, does next — whether you are drafting strategy, generating a new application, refining a design, or fixing an issue. The guidance below will help you get better results in fewer prompts, regardless of how technical you are.
Elle's responses are generated automatically and might include inaccurate information. Please carefully review the results for errors. Your account data is never used to train the AI model.
Click any of the following links to skip ahead:
Guiding principles
For most prompts, you can chat with Elle as you would a knowledgeable coworker, using language that feels natural. Keep these four principles in mind to help Elle return the results you want with the fewest interactions.
Add context: Elle can read the strategy, design, code, and data in your application. Attach a persona, goal, or requirement to your prompt so Elle understands who you are building for and why.
Segment complex tasks: Large requests rarely produce the right result in a single pass. Break a change into smaller steps — plan first, generate the scaffolding, then refine each page — so you can review and adjust as you go.
Be specific: Describe the outcome you want, not just the action. "Add a form for event registration that captures name, email, and dietary restrictions" will land closer than "Build a form."
Iterate: Review Elle's response, then prompt again to refine. Each round uses the context of the previous one, so you do not have to restate everything — a follow-up like "Shorten the confirmation message" or "Group the fields into two columns" will work.
If you find yourself writing the same prompt often, save a version of it so you can reuse it across applications.
Prompt for different kinds of work
Elle can help across every stage of an application's life. The kind of prompt that works best depends on the kind of work you are doing.
Drafting strategy: Start with the audience and the outcome. "Draft a persona for a new product catalog application aimed at marketing managers who need to find approved assets fast." Elle will produce a first draft you can refine.
Generating an application: Describe the purpose, the primary users, and the core workflows in one prompt. The more specific the request, the closer the first generated version will be to what you had in mind. Keep the initial scope focused — you can extend the application after the foundation is in place.
Designing pages and layouts: Describe the look and feel in terms of experience, not styling. "Make the dashboard feel calm and spacious, with plenty of whitespace and a single primary action per card."
If you have a reference image, upload it with your design prompt. Elle will intuit design choices with the image as context.
Working with data: Tell Elle what the data represents, not just its shape. "Add a Suppliers table with contact details, a status field for active or inactive, and a relationship to the existing Products table" will produce a more useful schema than "Add a Suppliers table."
Refining something that already exists: Point to the page, section, or field you want to change, and describe what you want different. "On the Orders page, group orders by month and show a total at the top of each group" will work better than a prompt that starts from scratch. In the application Preview, you can click Select elements in the preview and pick any component — a button, a modal, a table column — to scope Elle's focus to just that element. This is often the fastest way to explore layout ideas, apply branding you missed in the design step, or try different shapes for the same component.
Prompt when something is not working
You do not need to know how to code to resolve issues in Aha! Builder. If something does not look or behave the way you expected, describe what you see and let Elle do the diagnostic work.
Describe what you see, not how to fix it. You do not need to know the right technical term or the underlying code. Tell Elle what happened and what you expected — for example, "The Save button on the Customer form does nothing when I click it" or "The dashboard is showing a column of zeros instead of real counts."
Share a screenshot. Click the + icon in the Elle panel, select Upload files & images, and attach a screenshot of the page or error. Visual context often leads Elle to the cause faster than a written description alone.
Ask Elle to explain before fixing. A prompt like "Explain why this page is showing an empty table" gives you a read on the problem so you can decide whether Elle's proposed fix is the one you want. This is especially useful when the same issue could have more than one cause.
Ask for options. If the first fix does not feel right, ask Elle for alternatives: "What other ways could we solve this?" You can then pick the approach you want Elle to implement.
Revert if a change made things worse. Every change Elle makes is captured in your application's code history. If a fix introduced a new issue, roll back to the previous version and try a different prompt.
If a problem persists after a few rounds of prompting, it may be an application issue that needs a deeper look. Aha! Builder tracks and surfaces errors in the Issues area. Aha! Builder Scale customers can also invite developers for two-hour windows using a developer guest pass to resolve any technical issues.
Refine across multiple prompts
A finished application is rarely the result of a single prompt. It comes from a conversation — prompt, review, refine, prompt again. A few habits will help:
Preview after each meaningful change so you can catch unwanted side effects early.
Keep one thread of work per chat. Starting a new chat for a new topic keeps Elle's context focused on the task at hand.
Save a prompt you want to reuse in a workspace note. You can refine and reuse it across applications without rewriting it each time.
Invite a teammate into the chat when you reach a decision point. A second reviewer will often catch something you missed, and Elle can work from both of your prompts in the same conversation.