Write what you're building Before anything, I always start with a small doc called product.md. It says what I’m trying to make, how it should work, and what tools I’m using. Keeps me focused when the AI forgets what I asked.
Keep notes on how to deploy I got stuck at 1am once trying to remember how I set up my env vars. Now I keep a short file called how-to-ship.txt. Just write it all down early.
Use git all the time. Push to git early and often. You don’t wanna lose changes when AI goes off script. I push almost every time I finish something. Helps when things break.
Don’t keep one giant chat Every time I start on a new bug or feature, I open a fresh chat with the AI. It just works better that way. Too much context gets messy.
Plan features before coding Sometimes I ask the AI to help me think through a flow before I even write code. Then once I get the idea, I start building with smaller prompts.
Clean your files once a week Delete junk, name stuff better, put things in folders. Blackbox works better when your code is tidy. Also just feels better to look at.
Don’t ask the AI to build the whole app It’s good with small stuff. UI pieces, simple functions, refactors. Asking it to build your app start to finish usually ends badly.
Ask questions before asking for code When something breaks, I ask the AI what it thinks first. Let it explain the problem before fixing. Most times it finds the issue faster than me.
Tech debt comes fast I moved quick with the survey app and the mess built up fast. Take a pause now and then and clean things up or it gets too hard to fix later.
You’re the one in charge Blackbox is helping but you’re still the one building. Think like a builder. The AI is just there to speed things up when you know what you’re doing. That’s all. Still figuring things out but it’s been fun. If you’re just getting started, hope that helps a bit.
When building stuff, I often change direction mid-way. I ask ChatGPT to think like a UX designer for ideas, then like a developer, then a security expert. In the end, I always ask how to make the code cleaner and more optimized.
I realized AI needs a code map to better understand structure—classes, functions, variables, DB schema, relationships, etc. Without it, it starts hallucinating parameters and logic. So I built one for myself and made it public too: https://codemap4ai.com
