Best Practices

Best practices when using Jolt

Follow these tips and guidelines to get the most out of Jolt.

• Prompt Jolt for code changes that span between 100 and 1,000 lines of code
• Make sure prompts have a clear goal like a Linear or Jira ticket
• Use Chats when you're requesting changes in 1-3 files
• Use Plans when you're aiming for larger scale changes in 4+ files

Writing good prompts

A good prompt can make a big difference in Jolt's output. Much like an engineer on your team, Jolt excels when prompts are scoped, clear, and actionable.

Here's are a few ways to improve your prompts:

• Provide an actionable objective
  • Add a new DELETE /user/:id endpoint that calls the existing user service
• If you want Jolt to match a particular file's style or approach, mention it to Jolt
  • Match the new tests to the structure of user-service.spec.ts
• Ask Jolt how to approach a problem first, refine the goal, then tell Jolt to make the changes

Avoid these types of prompts:

• Build an entire application from scratch
• Use an esoteric library or service without providing docs as an attachment
• Find-and-replace across the entire codebase; instead, try to scope the request to 10 or fewer files

Limitations

• Jolt's context is scoped to a single git repository. If you want multi-repo context please contact hello@usejolt.ai.
• Jolt does not make changes to binary files like images, videos, or executables
• Jolt does not read files greater than 300KB and does not modify files greater than 100KB