Prompt recipes

Last updated 2026-08-16

Prompts here work in any connected client: Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or the built-in assistant. Copy them as-is, swap in your own names, and adjust the depth.

Two habits make every recipe work better. Name things exactly as they're named in the solution (the AI can search for near-misses, but exact names skip a step). And give one job per ask; a focused question gets a focused dive.

Take over a solution you didn't build

I just inherited this solution. Give me the lay of the land: what it's for, the biggest tables, the scripts that do the real work, and anything that looks unusual.

The AI starts from the solution overview, ranks tables and scripts by size, and samples the important ones. Ten minutes of this replaces a day of clicking through the Script Workspace.

Tip: follow up with "what would you want to know before touching anything?" It's good at naming the sharp edges.

Check impact before you change a field

What's the impact of renaming Customers::Email? Check scripts, layouts, calculations, and anything else that references it.

The AI pulls every reference to the field and organizes them by where they live. Do this before the rename, not after.

Understand a script step by step

Walk me through "Process Invoice": what it does, what it calls, what calls it, and where it can fail.

Expect a plain-English walkthrough with the actual steps, its callers and callees, and error handling gaps if there are any.

Find what's slow in production

*Needs uploaded server logs.*

What were the most expensive calls on this server last month? Group by script and tell me which one to fix first.

The answer comes from your real server logs, not guesses from reading code. Ask the follow-up "why is that one slow?" and it will cross-reference the script's actual steps.

Triage errors

*Needs uploaded server logs.*

What errors fired in the last two weeks of logs? Cluster them, tell me which are noise and which are real, and where each real one comes from.

Reconstruct an incident

*Needs uploaded server logs.*

Something went wrong around 2:30pm on the 14th. Build me a timeline of what was happening on the server around then.

Check a table before exposing it to the web

Is the Invoices table ready to expose over OData with the Sales privilege set? Check the whole access chain and tell me what would block it.

This runs FM Fathom's web-readiness rules for the Data API and OData against your actual schema and security setup, and reports what passes and what needs fixing.

Run a security pass

Audit this solution's security: accounts, privilege sets, extended privileges, and anything risky. Rank findings by severity.

Plan a cleanup

What in this solution is unused? Give me the safest deletions first, and tell me why you believe each one is unused.

FM Fathom's unused detection is deliberately conservative, and the "why" matters: an element is only flagged when nothing in the solution references it by the evidence available. Treat the list as a strong lead, verify in FileMaker, then delete.

Compose against your real schema

Compose a script that finds unpaid invoices older than 60 days and emails a summary to the account manager. Use my actual table and field names.

The result references your real schema, not a template's guess at it, delivered as a paste-ready snippet. Review it like you'd review a colleague's work; you're still the developer here.

Settle a "which one is biggest" question in one shot

Which layout has the most objects? Which table has the most fields? Which script is longest?

These are one tool call each. Handy in meetings.

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