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Explain Code Prompt — the Understanding Contract
"Explain this code" gets line-by-line narration. The understanding contract gets strategy, audience-fit, design decisions, and inference labeled as inference.
Code Explanation Prompt resources
Build code explanation prompts — mode, audience, and depth turn into an understanding contract that teaches, not narrates.
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Legacy Code Analysis — Likely Intent, Hidden Assumptions
For code whose authors are gone: reconstruct likely intent as labeled inference, hunt undocumented assumptions, and end with a maintenance brief — what's safe to touch.
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Algorithm Explanation Prompt — Idea, Steps, Complexity, Tradeoffs
Explain the idea before the implementation: numbered steps with their contribution, honest best/worst-case complexity, and the alternatives each decision point rejected.
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Architecture Explanation Prompt — Layers, Boundaries, Data Flow
Explain a system's shape, not its statements: layers and their owners, boundary contracts, dependency direction, and one request traced through every handoff.
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Beginner Code Explanation — Teach, Don't Narrate
For developers in their first year: one concept at a time, every term defined before use, real values traced through every step — and "simplified" said when simplifying.
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Dependency Analysis Prompt — What It Needs, What Needs It
Before touching a shared module: what it depends on, what depends on it, and which of those dependencies are risky — direction mapped, cycles flagged.
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Explain API Flow — One Endpoint, End to End
What actually happens when a client calls POST /orders: the contract, every decision point, every side effect, and the conditions that route off the happy path.
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Explain Code Line by Line
Build a prompt that walks through a function line by line — what each line does and why — calibrated for a developer still learning the codebase.
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Explain Large Class — the 900-Line Walkthrough
The class everyone avoids: its actual responsibilities, its key methods, its side effects, and the paths through it — understood before anyone proposes splitting it.
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Explain a Regex
Build a prompt that breaks a regular expression down piece by piece in plain language — what it matches, what each part does, and what it rejects.
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Onboarding Codebase — Explain Code to a New Team Member
A capable engineer with zero context on your codebase needs different explanations than a junior: conventions, vocabulary, and where everything connects — not syntax.
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Understand Business Logic — Code Rules in Business Terms
The discount rules live in code; the questions come from sales. This prompt explains implemented business logic to a technical manager — behavior and risk, minimal code.