Creative Prompts as an Alternative to "Vibe Coding"

In my experience, creatively prompting an LLM like Claude, Gemini or ChatGPT is way more useful than asking directly for a solution to a problem. Asking creatively for interactive guidance is as useful as asking questions to an software engineer who coaches you in a daily basis. For example, you may ask an LLM:

"Guide me interactively in designing a database scheme for a web directory website. After designing this database, guide me interactively to implement this website by using X framework... and using Y libraries...".

By asking this question and adding context to your question your LLM will guide you through the design process without necessarily producing a slop you copy without adaptation or customization. You may then ask other questions specifically related to the framework you would use to implement this website and the LLM can take that past design as context to your new questions. An LLM can even creatively help you discover unit testing cases you may miss without the direct guidance on a human coach.

This kind of questions are also an opportunity to help yourself configure a Linux server firewall like Firewalld. For example, you may ask:

"I already install firewalld on my Ubuntu Linux server. I'm using the public zone by default for all network interfaces. Guide me interactively to configure Firewalld so my docker service is accessible only through Tailscale and not the open Internet".

Executing this configuration process involves configuring Firewalld for each network interface on your server and it can be hard to execute without networking experience. However, an LLM can indeed help you adapt its answers to your own setup just as you would do by reading and asking on a website like Stackoverflow. You can even provide it the names of your network interfaces and ask it to help you in the process of opening ports and allowing services with Firewalld so it customizes its answers.

Moreover, when you already have answers you can then ask even more questions by taking into considerations past results by asking:

"Taking this past answers into consideration, now guide me interactively to configure X...".

Creative prompting is useful for solving many types of problems in system administration and can even help you design and implement a website without necessarily copying a slop as your own design. LLMs can guide you in a similar way to as a coaching engineer would if you take the time to ask creatively for answers.