Documentation

Compose

Compose is the wizard you reach for when you have an idea for a prompt but you don’t want to start from a blank editor. You describe what you need, pick a creation mode, and Prompty drafts a prompt you can edit, save, and reuse.

Compose is one of four Prompty-guided wizards in Promptmark, alongside Conduct, Orchestrate, and Guide. They all share the same modal-first UX – you launch a wizard, work through it inline, and end up back where you started without losing your place.

Opening Compose

Open the wizard from any of these surfaces:

  • New Prompt in the sidebar
  • The keyboard shortcut: ⌘P on macOS, Ctrl+P on Windows and Linux
  • The Compose button on the prompts list page

Compose opens in a modal – close it any time and you go back to whatever page you were on.

The Four Steps

Compose walks through four steps. You can navigate forward and back, and your selections carry across steps until you save or cancel.

1. Type

Pick what you’re creating:

  • Prompt – A standalone piece of text you’ll use directly with an AI model
  • Template – A prompt with {{variable}} placeholders you’ll fill in each time you use it

Templates are stored separately from prompts and surface their own “Use Template” flow in the library. See Template Variables for the full syntax.

2. Mode

Choose how Prompty drafts your content:

Mode When to Use
Blank You want to write from scratch in the editor. Skips the AI assist.
Guided Answer six structured questions (purpose, domain, audience, tone, constraints, role). Prompty turns your answers into a prompt deterministically – no AI call, no rate limit.
AI Consultation Describe what you need in plain English. Prompty sends your description to an AI model and returns three drafted suggestions you can pick from. Rate-limited.
Templates Browse Promptmark’s starter templates and adapt one.
Info
AI Consultation mode is rate-limited to 10 lifetime calls on free accounts. Guided mode is unlimited because it builds the prompt deterministically from your answers.

3. Setup

What you see depends on the mode you picked:

  • Blank – Skipped. You go straight to step 4.
  • Guided – A six-question form (purpose, domain, audience, tone, constraints, role). Required fields are marked; the rest are optional.
  • AI Consultation – A description field (up to 5,000 characters). Prompty drafts three suggestions and lets you pick the one that fits best – or regenerate if none feel right.
  • Templates – A searchable catalog of starter templates with previews.

4. Format

Choose the output format for your prompt:

Format Best For
Plain Conversational instructions, no markup
Markdown Structured prompts with headings, lists, emphasis (default)
XML Anthropic-style tag-delimited prompts
JSON Structured prompts for programmatic use
TOON Token-Oriented Object Notation – compact, AI-readable structured format

After you confirm the format, Prompty renders the final prompt and drops you into the editor, prefilled with title, content, and any template variables it detected. Edit anything you want, then save.

What Prompty Drafts

Compose’s AI Consultation mode uses Claude Haiku 4.5 by default. Drafted prompts are returned as three options at a time, each with:

  • Title – A short label (under 60 characters)
  • Content – The full prompt text in your chosen format
  • Reasoning – A brief note on why Prompty drafted it that way

Pick a suggestion, regenerate the set, or fall back to Guided mode if the suggestions miss the mark.

After You Save

The new prompt lands in your library with the type, tags, and visibility defaults you chose. From there it works like any other prompt:

  • Edit, version, and snapshot it
  • Test it against a model in the Testing view
  • Attach tools to it via Orchestrate
  • Publish, share, or remix it

Tips

  • Start with Guided when you’re new. It produces solid, structured prompts without burning AI consultations.
  • Use AI Consultation when you have a fuzzy idea. Describe the goal in plain English – Prompty handles the structure.
  • Templates beat both when there’s a starter. Adapting a vetted template is faster than drafting from scratch.
  • Cancel any time. Closing the modal discards the draft. Saving creates a new prompt with full version history from the first save forward.

What’s Next