Testing AI‑coder apps like Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code

🧠 1. Architecture & Planning Prompts These test whether the AI can think like a senior engineer.

• “Design a scalable architecture for a SaaS app with authentication, billing, and a multi‑tenant database. Include folder structure, API boundaries, and data flow.”
• “Create a technical specification for a Next.js 15 app that uses server actions, Prisma, and a vector database for RAG search.”
• “Propose three different architectures for a real‑time chat app and compare trade‑offs.”

🧩 2. Multi‑File Reasoning Prompts These test Cursor, Claude Code, Windsurf, and Kiro especially well.

• “Find all places in this repo where user roles are validated and refactor them into a single reusable permission module.”
• “Identify circular dependencies in this project and propose a fix.”
• “Update the entire codebase to use a new logging system without breaking existing functionality.”

🛠️ 3. Refactoring & Cleanup Prompts These test code quality and transformation ability.

• “Refactor this file to follow clean architecture principles and explain each change.”
• “Convert this entire component library from JavaScript to TypeScript with proper types.”
• “Rewrite this function to be more readable, more testable, and more performant.”

🐞 4. Debugging Prompts These test reasoning and error‑analysis skills.

• “Explain why this API route returns a 500 error and fix the root cause.”
• “Find the memory leak in this React component and rewrite it to avoid re‑renders.”
• “This SQL query is slow. Optimize it and explain the bottleneck.”

🔌 5. API & Backend Prompts These test backend design and correctness.

• “Create a REST API for a task manager with CRUD operations, validation, and error handling.”
• “Write a secure authentication flow using Next.js 15 Route Handlers and JWT.”
• “Design a WebSocket server that supports rooms, presence, and typing indicators.”

🗄️ 6. Database & Prisma Prompts These test schema design and migrations.

• “Design a Prisma schema for a multi‑tenant SaaS with row‑level security.”
• “Add soft‑delete support to all models and update queries accordingly.”
• “Generate seed data for 10,000 users with realistic relationships.”

🎨 7. UI & Frontend Prompts These test UI generation and component reasoning.

• “Build a responsive dashboard layout using shadcn/ui and Tailwind v4.”
• “Create a multi‑step form with validation and optimistic UI updates.”
• “Generate a dark‑mode‑aware theme using CSS variables and Tailwind.”

🤖 8. Agentic Workflow Prompts These test tools like Cursor, Windsurf, Claude Code, and Kiro.

• “Create a new feature branch, implement a settings page, update the API, and prepare a pull request.”
• “Scan the repo for outdated dependencies and upgrade everything safely.”
• “Implement a new onboarding flow across multiple files and ensure type safety.”

📚 9. Documentation Prompts These test clarity and communication.

• “Generate full documentation for this API, including examples and error codes.”
• “Write a README that explains how to run, test, and deploy this project.”
• “Create developer onboarding docs for a new engineer joining the team.”

🧪 10. Testing Prompts These test test‑generation and reasoning.

• “Write unit tests for this function using Vitest and explain edge cases.”
• “Create integration tests for this API route with mocked database calls.”
• “Generate E2E tests for the login flow using Playwright.”

🎯 Best All‑Around Benchmark Prompts These are the ones that reveal the biggest differences between AI coding tools:

• “Add a new feature across multiple files and explain every change.”
• “Refactor the entire authentication system to use server actions instead of API routes.”
• “Find all security vulnerabilities in this repo and fix them.”
• “Rewrite this codebase to follow clean architecture principles.”