Prompt Engineering Step 3: Role-Playing Prompts (Cursor)

You can guide Cursor Chat's response style, focus, and level of detail by assigning it a specific role or persona in your prompt (Cmd+L / Ctrl+L).

Why Use Role-Playing?

  • Tailored Explanations: Get explanations suitable for different audiences (e.g., "Explain this like I'm 5" vs. "Explain this to a senior architect").
  • Code Style/Quality Focus: Ask for code generation or review from a specific perspective (e.g., "Act as a security expert...", "Generate code following functional programming principles...").
  • Targeted Feedback: Frame requests for critique based on a specific role's concerns (e.g., performance, accessibility, maintainability).

How to Use Role-Playing in Prompts

Start your prompt by clearly stating the role you want the AI to adopt. Use context (@ symbols or code selection) as needed.

Examples (Use in Chat Cmd+L):

  • Senior Developer Review: 
    Act as a senior software engineer with 10+ years of experience in Node.js. Review the selected code block. Identify potential performance bottlenecks, suggest improvements for readability, and check for adherence to common async/await best practices.
  • Beginner Explanation: 
    Explain the concept of closures in JavaScript, assuming I am a beginner programmer who understands basic functions and variables. Use simple analogies if possible.
  • Security Expert Audit: 
    You are a security expert. Analyze the function @handleUserInput in @controller.py for potential security vulnerabilities like injection attacks or improper input sanitization. Suggest specific fixes.
  • Specific Style Generation: 
    Generate a Python class for managing user settings, following the Google Python Style Guide strictly.
Experiment!

Try different roles like "QA Tester", "Database Administrator", "UI/UX Designer", depending on the task to see how it influences Cursor's response.

Proceed to Prompting Step 4: Iteration