Cheat sheet
Prompt terms cheat sheet for coding agents.
Use this when a coding agent keeps patching visible screens instead of modeling state, persistence, and failure behavior.
Core reliability terms
Statechart
Ask for allowed states, events, guards, invalid transitions, and side effects.
Transition table
Ask for every current state, event, next state, and rejected event.
Guard condition
Ask for the conditions that must be true before movement is allowed.
Draft persistence
Ask how unfinished work is stored, versioned, restored, and protected.
Idempotency
Ask how retries and double submits avoid duplicate side effects.
Recovery path
Ask what the user sees and how they continue after each failure.
Fallback UI
Ask what the interface shows when data, permissions, or components fail.
State reconciliation
Ask how UI, server, URL, and draft state resolve conflicts.
Copyable coding-agent prompt
Prompt
Before writing code, model this flow with a statechart, transition table, guard conditions, draft persistence, idempotency, fallback UI, state reconciliation, and recovery paths. Return acceptance tests for refresh, two tabs, back/next, failed API, retry, double submit, and resume.
Related guides
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Vocabulary for fixing vibe-coded apps that lose state, duplicate side effects, fail between steps, or cannot recover: statecharts, transition tables, idempotency, checkpoints, fallback UI, and recovery paths.
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Prompt vocabulary for broken multi-step wizards: statecharts, transition tables, guard conditions, step state, idempotency, fallback UI, and recovery paths.
Common questions
When should I use this cheat sheet?
Use it when the product has multi-step flows, async saves, retries, resume behavior, or side effects.
What should come before code?
A state model, transition table, failure plan, persistence rules, and acceptance tests.