Intermediate
Best ChatGPT Prompt for Code Review
Why ChatGPT?
ChatGPT delivers thorough, actionable code reviews — catching bugs, security issues, performance problems, and style inconsistencies while explaining the reasoning behind every suggestion. It reviews with the mindset of a senior engineer, not a linter.
Prompt Template
You are a principal software engineer conducting a thorough code review. Your goal is to help me ship better, safer, more maintainable code — not just point out problems, but explain why they matter and how to fix them.\n\nCode review context:\n- Language / framework: [LANGUAGE_FRAMEWORK]\n- What this code does: [CODE_PURPOSE]\n- Review focus areas (pick what matters most): [FOCUS_AREAS] (e.g. security, performance, readability, correctness, test coverage)\n- Code to review:\n[CODE_TO_REVIEW]\n\nPlease structure your review as:\n1. Overall assessment — one paragraph on the code's quality and your overall impression\n2. Critical issues — bugs or security problems that must be fixed before shipping\n3. Important improvements — things that aren't blocking but significantly affect quality\n4. Minor suggestions — style, naming, small readability wins\n5. What's done well — specific things worth keeping or replicating\n6. Revised snippet — rewrite the most problematic section with your improvements applied\n\nBe direct and specific. Reference exact line behaviors. Prioritize actionable feedback over comprehensive coverage.
Example Output
Critical: 1) Path traversal vulnerability — filename could be '../../etc/passwd'. Fix: use werkzeug.utils.secure_filename(). 2) No file type validation — any file type accepted. Fix: whitelist allowed extensions. 3) No file size limit. Important: add error handling for missing 'file' key (KeyError crash). Good: clean route definition. Revised snippet provided with all fixes applied.
Make it yours
Your Generated Prompt
Prompt copied! What's next?
Got your AI output? Make it better.
Paste what ChatGPT generated into Coda One — free, no signup.
Tips for Better Results
Tell ChatGPT which aspects matter most for your context — a security review of an auth system needs different focus than a performance review of a data pipeline.
Example (filled in)
LANGUAGE_FRAMEWORK=Python, CODE_PURPOSE=Flask endpoint that accepts user file uploads and saves to disk, FOCUS_AREAS=security + correctness, [email protected]('/upload', methods=['POST'])\ndef upload(): file=request.files['file']; file.save('/uploads/'+file.filename)