Rohit Mehra et al. (2026) — IBM Research / International Institute of Information Technology. arXiv.
Prompt engineering is a critical yet undertaught skill for software developers, poorly served by traditional instruction because of its evolving, interactive, context-dependent nature. The authors introduce Prompt Coach (PC), an agentic tutor embedded in-flow within a developer's IDE that teaches prompt crafting through Socratic guidance. PC scores prompt quality across multiple dimensions and surfaces targeted questions that guide self-correction, grounded in the developer's codebase and the target LLM's behavior. An early empirical study with 15 professional developers showed statistically significant improvements after a single 60-minute session, with the largest gains on dimensions developers commonly overlook, plus strong trust and adoption readiness.
Key Contributions
- In-flow Socratic tutoring: PC delivers scaffolding and feedback-loop support directly inside the IDE, contextualized to the developer's code and the target model.
- Empirical gains: Statistically significant prompt-quality improvement after one 60-minute session, aligning with findings in prompt-based-programming-lesson about prompt fluency as a learnable skill.
- Self-correction emphasis: Targeted Socratic questions steer developers to repair their own prompts rather than receive answers, consistent with formative-assessment practice.
- Professional context: Extends cs-education and professional-training beyond novices to working developers.
- Trust and adoption: Participants reported high trust and unanimous belief PC improved their skills, contributing to ai-literacy for practitioners.
Related Pages
- prompt-based-programming-lesson — Teaching prompt construction as a programming skill
- scaffolding — Socratic guidance and in-flow support
- feedback-loop — Prompt-quality scoring and targeted correction
- cs-education — Computing education and developer skills
- formative-assessment — Self-correction oriented tutoring