A guide to writing prompts that get AI Mode to do what you actually want — the first time.

We dug into more than 1,000 real conversations with AI Mode over the last few months to see why some land perfectly and others go in circles. The good news? Most prompts work great on the first try. And when they don't, the reason almost always comes down to one of a few small habits — each of which is a one-line fix.

Think of this less as rules and more as the things your friend on the AI Mode team would lean over and tell you if they were sitting next to you.

The shortcut version: AI Mode is at its best when you tell it the exact thing to find, the exact thing to do, and where to do it. That's it. Everything below is a flavor of that.

Five habits that make AI Mode shine

1. Drop exact words in quotes when you want to find or replace text.
2. Tell AI Mode what to do — don't ask whether it's possible.
3. Say where (this screen, this template, every screen).
4. Skip "this," "that," and "the selected element" unless something really is selected.
5. One ask per prompt. Save follow-ups for follow-ups.

Below is each one with real examples — what worked, what didn't, and how to fix it.

1. Quotes are your best friend

If there's a specific word or phrase you want AI Mode to change, wrap it in quotes. Same goes for whatever you want it changed to. People who use quotes are about twice as likely to get a clean first-try result — the quotes make it crystal clear where the find ends and the replace begins.

✅ This works

• change all text strings in the screens which include the Exact Text "Extended ECM" to "Content Management"
• In this demo, replace all "Senior Software Engineer" with "Product Analyst"
• replace all instances of Dorman with CUSTOMER
• Replace this text with "Dario Garcia"

All four work because there's a literal string to look for and a literal string to swap in.

❌ This doesn't

• Update email address to generic email address

What email address? And what's "generic"? AI Mode has to guess at both, and usually picks wrong. A small rewrite — Replace "alex@walnut.io" with "sample@acme.com" on every screen — would have nailed it.

• Replace all the phone numbers in this display with (303) 555 numbers

"All the phone numbers" isn't a string you can search for — it's a pattern. Give AI Mode something to swap in instead: Replace every phone number you find with "(303) 555-0142".

• Change "Nawest" to "NatWest", anywhere in this demo

This one followed the rule but still missed — because "Nawest" wasn't actually in the demo (the typo was spelled differently). When you can, copy the exact text straight from the demo so the spelling matches character-for-character.

2. Tell AI Mode to do the thing

AI Mode is an agent. It loves taking action. But when you phrase your request as a question — "how do I..." — it'll answer with helpful instructions instead of just doing the change for you. People who open with "how do I" get an explanation about 3× more often than people who open with a clear command.

✅ This works — phrased as an instruction

• Can you change the "Home" button text to "Views"?
• delete all guides here in this template
• Make dates look more recent
• unblur this element (with the element actually selected)
• Move last annotation from first guide to the last guide

❌ This gets you a how-to article

• how do i edit element on page
• how to unlink something
• How do you delete a video in a module
• do i have ability to toggle buttons on and off
• how can I bring down an icon in the screen? its not in the right place

Each of these got a perfectly reasonable explanation — which is exactly what the words asked for. But the user actually wanted the change made. Unlink this screen, or Move the calendar icon down so it lines up with the row above, would have done it in one shot.

Quick gut-check: Before you hit send, re-read your prompt. If it ends in a question mark and starts with "how," rewrite it as a command.

3. Tell AI Mode where to do it

AI Mode can work on the current screen, one specific screen, a single guide, or your whole template — but it needs you to say which. Successful prompts almost always make this explicit.

✅ Clear scope

• on the current slide, are you able to change each instance of "Mindy MarketDemo" to "Logan McNeill"?
• Replace all 2025 to 2026 on every screen
• In this demo, replace all "Senior Software Engineer" with "Product Analyst"
• Update all place names in the 'place' column to read Place Name Place address line 1 Place address line 2
• Move the first annotation of the first guide to the last guide

❌ Where, exactly?

• Looking for a typo, does this contain "Selectins" at all?

Where — this element? This screen? Every screen? AI Mode picks one interpretation, you meant another, and you both end up frustrated.

• Refine the text for the first annotation

First annotation of which guide, on which screen? Same prompt with "of the first guide on screen 1.2" works in one go.

Handy phrases:

• on the current screen
• on screen 1.4
• across this template / across this demo / on every screen
• in the first guide or in guide 2
• in the [column / table / section] called "X"

4. Be careful with "this" and "that"

Pointing words like "this," "that," and "the selected element" are great when something really is selected in your editor. When nothing is selected, AI Mode has no idea what you're pointing at — and these vague references show up about twice as often in the conversations that get stuck.

✅ Works — because something was actually selected

• unblur this element (user had clicked the blurred element first)
• Can you blur the title?
• Replace this text with "Dario Garcia" (text element was selected)

❌ Pointing at thin air

• hide the selected element on all screens
• Get ride of that cursor movement
• Refine the text for the first annotation (which one?)
• change the velocity logo in the top left corner

(That last one missed because the "logo" was actually rendered as text, not an image. A cleaner ask: Change the "Velocity" wordmark in the top-left corner of every screen to "Acme.")

Rule of thumb: if you're going to say "this" or "that," make sure (a) it's actually selected in the editor, and (b) you mention that in the prompt so AI Mode knows to look at the selection ("the title I have selected," "this button").

5. One ask at a time

Stacking multiple changes into a single prompt — do A and B and also C — fails more often than focused asks. If any one of the three trips, the whole thing comes back with an error. Splitting them into separate prompts is faster overall.

✅ One thing

• Can you change the background color of the main button?
• Create a banner image with contact center professionals working in background in an office environment. The dimensions of the banner image should be 1707x282
• Generate guided steps from my screens

❌ Three things at once

• change the Confirmed bookings count to 2300 & accordingly also change the bar size. Change color of that bar to green.

AI Mode got the count and the color right, but couldn't pull off the bar resize — so the whole conversation ended in failure. Three separate prompts would have shipped all three changes cleanly.

• Translate demo into chinese and generate audio

Two big, distinct jobs. Either one alone usually works fine; together, the conversation gets stuck.

Pattern that works: lead with your most important change, make sure it landed, then move to the next one.

A few more things worth knowing

If you want a target value, include the target value

These prompts failed only because they were missing the punchline:

• Can you change the title of the first annotation? (to what?)
• Refine the text for the first annotation (refine how?)
• translate in french (translate what — the current screen? the guide titles?)
• Can you generate for me a new logo? (for what brand, in what style?)

Fix: Change the title of the first annotation on screen 1.2 to "Step 1 — Pick a region." The clearer the destination, the better the result.

"Personalize customer details" / "Anonymize personal content"

These two prompts are some of the most common things people ask AI Mode — and they fail more often than they succeed. AI Mode doesn't know what counts as "personal" in your demo, or what "personalized" means for your specific prospect. When it works, the user has either given the target values upfront or quickly answered AI Mode's clarifying question.

Stronger starting prompts:

• Anonymize personal content on all screens. Replace any real names with names from this list: Alex Jordan, Priya Singh, Marco Costa. Replace company names with "Acme." Replace email addresses with sample@acme.com.
• Personalize this demo for Acme Corp. Replace the customer name "Velocity" with "Acme" everywhere. Replace any logos with the Acme logo I'll upload next.

Use the demo's language

If your demo is in German or Spanish, write the prompt in that language — AI Mode handles non-English search-and-replace just fine, and it avoids translation mismatches.

• Ersetze "Deine Schichtgruppe" durch Studio
• can you make all mentions of £ to €

"What can you do?" is a perfectly good opener

Asking AI Mode what it can do is one of the most common opening prompts we see, and it almost always works:

• tell me what you can do
• Tell me how to about guides

If you're new to AI Mode, it's a great way to get oriented. Just don't lean on it when you actually want something done.

Cheat sheet

When it's not your prompt — it's us

Sometimes a conversation gets stuck and it isn't your fault. Roughly half the time AI Mode struggles, a tweak to the prompt would've gotten it across the line. The rest is genuinely on us — features that aren't quite there yet.

Things AI Mode can't do today (so don't lose time tweaking the prompt — flag it instead):

• Editing images by adding or removing specific objects inside them (it can regenerate a whole new image, just not surgically edit an existing one)
• Changing chart bar widths or other low-level chart styling
• Editing text that's been baked into an image rather than rendered as HTML
• Reverting to a specific earlier message in a long conversation
• Cropping or trimming media

If AI Mode tells you (or it becomes clear) that something isn't possible, please leave a thumbs-down with a quick note. Those notes are exactly what we use to prioritize what to ship next.

TL;DR — write prompts like quick work orders

Imagine you're handing a quick task to a teammate on Slack. You'd tell them:

1. What to look for (in quotes)
2. What to change it to (in quotes)
3. Where to do it (this screen / every screen / this guide)
4. As one task, not three

That's it. Most of the bumps we see disappear the moment a prompt passes those four checks. Have fun with it — and let us know when something doesn't work, so we can make AI Mode better for everyone.