Software teams already understand the importance of retaining build artifacts. We keep migration files so we know how the schema evolved. We keep Dockerfiles because “it runs on my machine” doesn’t scale. We keep ADRs because decisions without history get repeated. Yet, when it comes to prompts used during the development cycle, most teams let them vanish into the ether.
That’s a mistake.
The Invisible Layer of Development
If you’re working with LLMs, prompts aren’t just throwaway queries. They’re the source material behind architectural diagrams, schema drafts, test scaffolds, and even code reviews. Every time you refine a prompt to get a better migration script or compress a design doc into bullet points, you’re shaping the system just as much as when you push code.
But here’s the problem: if those prompts aren’t saved, you’ve lost the reasoning trail. You can’t retrace why a schema ended up with that structure, or why a function was written a certain way. You’ve lost the “how” of the build.
Why It Matters
Think about what happens if you ignore this:
- Lost decisions: The reasoning behind a design choice is locked in an engineer’s chat history instead of the repo.
- Broken reproducibility: If a teammate wants to re-generate the same migration or scaffold, they have to reinvent the prompt.
- No collective learning: Patterns that worked don’t get shared, so the team keeps rediscovering them.
- Audit gaps: When compliance asks why the system behaves a certain way, “because ChatGPT told me so” doesn’t cut it.
This isn’t hypothetical. Most teams hit this wall once LLMs become central to their workflow.
Prompts as Process Artifacts
The right way to treat these prompts is the same way we treat other development artifacts: capture them, version them, and make them accessible.
When you think about it, prompts are just another type of build artifact:
- Migrations document schema evolution
- Design docs capture rationale for trade-offs
- Prompts record reasoning and iteration context
When you line them up side by side, prompts aren’t outliers. They’re peers.
How to Do It
I’m not arguing for saving every throwaway “explain this error message” chat. I’m arguing for capturing prompts that materially shaped the build. The ones that led to migrations, code, tests, or design decisions.
- Save them with the artifact: If a migration came from an LLM, commit the final prompt alongside the SQL file.
- Organize them: Treat them like notes or ADRs. Simple markdown files are fine.
- Version them: If a prompt evolves, capture the revisions. Diff it like you would a config file.
- Share them: Make them accessible in the repo so the team can reuse, adapt, or challenge them.
flowchart TD
A["Engineer Crafts Prompt"] --> B["LLM Generates Output"]
B --> C["Artifact Created: Migration, Doc, Test"]
C --> D["Prompt Stored with Artifact"]
D --> E["Repo Versions Both"]
E --> F["Team Reuses & Evolves Prompt"]Zooming Out
The story here is simple: prompts are part of the development process. They’re the design conversations we used to have on whiteboards, the shell scripts we used to share over Slack, the snippets we used to copy from Stack Overflow. The difference is they now drive more of the system than ever before.
If we don’t treat them as artifacts, we lose context, reproducibility, and collective learning. If we do, we gain a sharper, faster, more transparent development cycle.
Prompts are not just the inputs to the app you ship. They’re also the scaffolding that got you there. Treat them with the same respect you give migrations, design docs, and build scripts. Because your future self — and your teammates — will thank you.