50 ChatGPT Prompts for Australian Software Engineers (2026)

These prompts are designed for software engineers who think beyond individual functions — covering system design, architecture, requirements, testing strategy, and operations. Use them with ChatGPT, Claude, or any capable AI assistant. Adapt them to your specific stack, domain, and constraints.

System Design and Architecture

1. "I need to design a system that handles [describe requirements: scale, data volume, latency requirements]. Walk me through an architecture that would meet these requirements and explain the key trade-offs."

2. "Compare a microservices architecture vs a monolith for [describe application]. Given that our team is [size] and we need to [describe constraints], which would you recommend and why?"

3. "I'm designing the data model for [describe system]. What schema would you recommend? Explain your choices around normalisation, indexing, and relationships."

4. "We're experiencing [describe scaling problem] at [describe scale]. What architectural changes would address this? What are the risks of each approach?"

5. "Review this architecture diagram description: [describe architecture]. What are the single points of failure, potential bottlenecks, and security concerns?"

6. "I need to choose between [technology A] and [technology B] for [use case]. Our constraints are [describe constraints]. What would you recommend and why?"

7. "How should I design the API for [describe service]? What endpoints, request/response shapes, and versioning strategy would you recommend?"

8. "I'm building a system that needs to handle [describe event-driven requirements]. Should I use [message queue / event streaming / pub-sub]? What are the trade-offs?"

Requirements and Specification

9. "Here are the business requirements for [describe feature]: [paste requirements]. What technical requirements and constraints should I add? What edge cases are missing?"

10. "Convert these user stories into technical acceptance criteria: [paste user stories]. Be specific about what needs to be true for each story to be considered done."

11. "I'm writing a technical specification for [describe feature]. Review this draft and identify gaps, ambiguities, and potential misunderstandings: [paste spec]."

12. "What non-functional requirements should I consider for [describe system]? Think about performance, security, reliability, maintainability, and compliance."

13. "These two requirements seem to conflict: [describe conflict]. How would you resolve this? What questions should I ask the stakeholders?"

14. "I need to estimate the effort for [describe feature]. What are the main components, risks, and unknowns I should factor into my estimate?"

Code Review and Quality

15. "Review this code for correctness, performance, security, and maintainability: [paste code]. Be specific about what should change and why."

16. "This pull request implements [describe feature]. Here is the diff: [paste diff]. What issues should be addressed before merging?"

17. "I'm refactoring this legacy code: [paste code]. What approach would you take? What risks should I be aware of?"

18. "Identify the design patterns used in this code and evaluate whether they're appropriate: [paste code]."

19. "This code has a performance problem under load. Here is the profiling output: [describe profiling results]. What are the likely causes and how would you fix them?"

20. "Review this API design for usability and consistency: [paste API spec]. What would make it easier for consumers to use correctly?"

21. "What technical debt exists in this codebase based on this description: [describe codebase]? How would you prioritise addressing it?"

Testing Strategy

22. "Design a testing strategy for [describe system]. What should be tested at unit, integration, and end-to-end levels? What should be mocked vs tested with real dependencies?"

23. "Write a test plan for [describe feature]. Include happy path, edge cases, error conditions, and performance considerations."

24. "I'm adding tests to this legacy code that has no existing tests: [paste code]. What's the safest approach? Where should I start?"

25. "Review these tests and identify what they're missing: [paste tests]. What edge cases and error conditions aren't covered?"

26. "How should I test this distributed system component? [describe component]. What are the challenges and how do I address them?"

27. "I need to write a load test for [describe system]. What scenarios should I test and what metrics should I measure?"

28. "What's the right balance of unit vs integration vs end-to-end tests for [describe application type]? Explain the reasoning."

Documentation

29. "Write an architecture decision record (ADR) for this decision: [describe decision, context, options considered, and chosen option]."

30. "Create a runbook for [describe operational procedure]. Include prerequisites, step-by-step instructions, and what to do if something goes wrong."

31. "Write a technical design document for [describe feature]. Include overview, architecture, data model, API design, and open questions."

32. "Generate API documentation for these endpoints: [paste endpoint definitions]. Include request/response examples and error codes."

33. "Write a post-mortem for this incident: [describe what happened, timeline, impact, root cause, and remediation]. Follow a blameless format."

34. "Create onboarding documentation for a new engineer joining a team working on [describe system]. What do they need to know to be productive?"

Incident Response and Operations

35. "We have a production incident: [describe symptoms, error messages, and what's been checked so far]. What should we investigate next?"

36. "Analyse these logs and identify the root cause of the problem: [paste relevant log excerpts]. What is happening and why?"

37. "Design an alerting strategy for [describe system]. What metrics should trigger alerts, at what thresholds, and with what urgency?"

38. "We're seeing [describe performance degradation] in production. Here is the relevant monitoring data: [describe metrics]. What are the likely causes?"

39. "Write a disaster recovery plan for [describe system]. What are the failure scenarios, recovery procedures, and RTO/RPO targets?"

40. "How should I implement observability for [describe system]? What should I log, what metrics should I collect, and what traces should I capture?"

Career and Professional Development

41. "I'm preparing for a system design interview. Walk me through how you would design [describe system] and what questions an interviewer might ask."

42. "Review my technical proposal for [describe proposal]. What are the weaknesses in my argument and what objections should I be prepared to address?"

43. "I need to explain [technical concept] to a non-technical stakeholder. Help me write a clear explanation without jargon."

44. "I'm writing a technical blog post about [describe topic]. Review this draft for clarity, accuracy, and whether it will be useful to the target audience: [paste draft]."

45. "What are the most important skills for a software engineer to develop in 2026? Given my background in [describe background], what should I focus on?"

Security and Compliance

46. "Review this authentication implementation for security issues: [paste code]. What vulnerabilities exist and how should they be fixed?"

47. "I'm building a system that handles [describe sensitive data]. What security controls should I implement? Consider Australian privacy legislation requirements."

48. "Perform a threat model for [describe system]. What are the main attack vectors and how should they be mitigated?"

49. "Review this infrastructure configuration for security issues: [paste configuration]. What should be changed?"

50. "We need to achieve [describe compliance requirement: SOC 2 / ISO 27001 / PCI DSS / Australian Privacy Act]. What technical controls do we need to implement?"

Getting the Most from These Prompts

Software engineering prompts work best when you provide full context. Before sending a prompt, add:

Your constraints: team size, existing technology stack, budget, timeline, and any non-negotiable requirements.

The current state: what already exists, what decisions have already been made, and what you're trying to change or add.

The decision criteria: what matters most — performance, simplicity, cost, developer experience, or something else.

Australian context where relevant: data sovereignty requirements, compliance obligations (Australian Privacy Act, APRA, ASIC), and whether the system handles sensitive data.

The more specific your prompt, the more useful the response. Generic prompts produce generic answers. Specific prompts — with real constraints, real code, and real context — produce answers you can actually use.