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HAL GOBVAN
HAL GOBVAN

Posted on • Originally published at gobvan.gumroad.com

I wrote 118 prompts so I could stop retyping the same ones in Cursor every week

I freelance in Python. Every project starts the same way: open Cursor, paste my "context-setting" prompt, paste the "scope review" prompt, paste the "what could go wrong" prompt. Then I do it again on the next project.

I finally put all 118 of my most-used prompts into one PDF.

What's in it

  • Bug root-cause (paste the traceback, get a hypothesis + minimal repro)
  • Time estimates (turns "I think this is 2 days" into "this is 2 days, here are the 3 risks")
  • .cursorrules author (writes your repo's rules file from a 3-sentence brief)
  • Security audit (finds OWASP top 10 issues, ranks them, suggests fixes)
  • Dockerfile generator (multi-stage, distroless, ~80MB final image)
  • README writer (because nobody does it until they have to onboard someone)
  • Test scaffolding (pytest + factory_boy, runs on first try)
  • API client (typed Python client from OpenAPI spec)
  • Migration script (Alembic, with rollback)
  • Refactor planner (breaks a 2000-line file into 6 modules with no behavior change)
  • Client comms (status update, scope creep, "I need more time" without sounding like a tool)

The "review before you code" prompt

If you only use one prompt from the kit, use this one:

Act as a senior Python architect. Review this spec and identify the 3 most likely failure points before we start. Assume we have 3 days, not 3 weeks. Be specific. Don't summarize the spec back to me — I wrote it.

This catches scope creep before it costs a day.

Free sampler (10 prompts): https://gobvan.gumroad.com/l/skzza
Full kit ($19): https://gobvan.gumroad.com/l/wypos

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