The Conventions Prompt: Make AI Code Changes Blend Into Your Repo

If you’ve ever asked an assistant to “just add the feature”, you know the pain: It adds a new folder structure you’ve never used. It formats code almost like your repo, but not quite. It invents patterns your team consciously avoided. The result isn’t necessarily wrong — it’s just foreign . And foreign code is expensive code. I use a simple technique to fix this: the Conventions Prompt . It’s a small, reusable block of instructions that makes every change look like it was written by someone who has lived in your codebase for months. The idea Most assistants are great at solving the problem and mediocre at matching your way of solving problems . Your repo already has a culture: naming conventions error handling rules logging style preferred libraries “we don’t do that here” constraints architecture boundaries The Conventions Prompt captures that culture in one place and attaches it to every request. Think of it as a style+architecture contract . What goes into a Conventions Prompt Keep