Complete AI Training
Sign inGet started

Prompt course · 8 lessons · 24 prompts · 1 hour · Beginner

AI for Software Architects

A prompt course built around the documents architects actually write: decision records, technical specs, stack comparisons, and review notes. Each lesson gives you a prompt you can adapt to your own systems.

Start the courseAlready a member? Sign in
Share

What you'll learn

  • Decision records: Draft an ADR that lays out options, trade-offs, and consequences in a form your team can review.
  • Technical specs: Turn a requirement into a structured spec with API contracts and acceptance criteria.
  • Stack choices: Compare frameworks, platforms, and build-versus-buy options with a clear summary and a proof-of-concept plan.
  • Diagrams and flows: Turn a written design into diagrams, inventories, and sequence flows a team can maintain.
  • Code reviews: Check pull requests and module designs for coupling, fit, and maintainability.
  • Performance planning: Estimate capacity, spot likely bottlenecks, and draft a scaling plan before launch.
  • Security and compliance: Run threat modeling and control mapping so your design holds up to review.
  • Team communication: Explain a design to engineers, stakeholders, and new joiners in language they can use.

What's inside

8 lessons · 24 prompts
  1. Before you start · framework course Break It Down: Least-to-Most, Plan-and-Solve and Tree of ThoughtsThis prompt framework fits software architects because it breaks a microservices migration into staged decisions and compares alternate routes before committing.
  2. Start here Priya's Thursday, two waysA day in the life of a Software Architect, before and after these prompts.
  3. 01 Lesson 1 · 3 prompts Architecture Decision Records
  4. 02 Lesson 2 · 3 prompts Technical Specifications
  5. 03 Lesson 3 · 3 prompts Technology Stack Evaluation
  6. 04 Lesson 4 · 3 prompts Diagram and Model Systems
  7. 05 Lesson 5 · 3 prompts Code Quality Reviews
  8. 06 Lesson 6 · 3 prompts Performance and Scalability
  9. 07 Lesson 7 · 3 prompts Security and Compliance
  10. 08 Lesson 8 · 3 prompts Team Guidance and Communication

About this course

7 topics

Prompts for Decisions, Specs, and Reviews

Architecture work is mostly thinking, but the output is writing. This course gives you prompts for the eight documents and conversations that fill an architect's week, from decision records to onboarding notes.

You will use ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini alongside your own material. Each lesson shows the prompt, explains why it is shaped that way, and points out where your judgment has to take over.

  1. The lessons
    1. Architecture Decision Records: Capture and communicate key architecture choices with AI-drafted ADRs that compare options and record consequences.
    2. Technical Specifications: Turn requirements into structured technical specs, API contracts, and acceptance criteria ready for engineering review.
    3. Technology Stack Evaluation: Evaluate frameworks, platforms, and build-vs-buy options with structured AI comparisons and PoC plans.
    4. Diagram and Model Systems: Convert architecture descriptions into diagrams, inventories, and sequence flows that teams can review and maintain.
    5. Code Quality Reviews: Review pull requests and module designs for architectural fit, coupling, and maintainability with AI assistance.
    6. Performance and Scalability: Estimate capacity, find bottlenecks, and draft scaling strategies for system designs before they reach production.
    7. Security and Compliance: Apply threat modeling, control mapping, and review checklists to keep architecture aligned with security and regulatory needs.
    8. Team Guidance and Communication: Explain architecture, onboard engineers, and brief stakeholders with AI-generated explanations and talking points.
  2. What the course covers

    Eight lessons, one for each part of the architect's week. You start with decision records, because they set the habit of writing down why. Then specs, stack choices, diagrams, reviews, performance, security, and finally how you explain it all to other people.

  3. How the lessons connect

    The order matters. A decision record feeds a spec, a spec feeds diagrams, and diagrams make reviews easier. By the time you reach the communication lesson, you have a trail of material you can reuse in a design review or a hiring interview.

  4. How to use the prompts well

    Give the AI your real constraints: team size, budget, existing systems, and deadlines. Ask for two or three options instead of one answer. Then read the draft closely and cut anything that sounds confident but is not true for your system.

  5. Who this course is for

    This is for software architects, lead engineers moving into architecture, and anyone who signs off on system design. If you already write specs and decision records, you will recognize the work and move faster. If you are newer to it, the prompts give you a structure to follow.

  6. Safety and privacy

    Keep customer data, credentials, and anything under contract out of the chat. Describe the shape of the problem instead of pasting real records. Check your company's rules on AI tools before you start, and treat every draft as something to verify.

  7. Your next step

    Pick one lesson and use it on a task you have this week. Save the prompt, adjust it to your own wording, and keep a small file of the ones that work. That file becomes your own toolkit.