System Prompt Examples on GitHub: 8 Repos With Production-Ready Prompts

Writing good system prompts from scratch is slow. These GitHub repos give you battle-tested starting points.

## System Prompt Examples on GitHub: 8 Repos With Production-Ready Prompts A good system prompt is 80% of an LLM app's behavior, but writing one from scratch takes hours of iteration. These GitHub repositories collect production prompts you can adapt in minutes. ## The 8 Repos Worth Your Time **1. f/awesome-chatgpt-prompts - 135,000+ stars.** The classic. Hundreds of role prompts ("Act as a Linux terminal", "Act as a career counselor"). Great starting points, but many are generic - customize before shipping. **2. dair-ai/Prompt-Engineering-Guide - 55,000+ stars.** More textbook than prompt library, with system-prompt design patterns and techniques. Read it once, and you will write better prompts than any library. **3. PlexPt/awesome-chatgpt-prompts-zh - 60,000+ stars.** Chinese-language prompts, including system prompts for Chinese business writing and translation. **4. f/awesome-chatgpt-prompts-zh (fork collection).** Community-maintained Chinese translations of the original library. **5. prompt-engineering/system-prompts - curated app-style prompts** with variables and instructions for real products (customer support, content moderation). **6. microsoft/promptflow examples - Microsoft's repo** includes system prompt templates for RAG and chat apps with evaluation scripts. **7. smol-ai/developer - "developer" role prompt** that turns an LLM into a software engineer with file structure awareness. **8. Anthropic's prompt library (docs.anthropic.com)** - not GitHub, but Anthropic publishes official system prompts for Claude, including the famous Claude 3/4 system prompts analyzed in the community. ## How to Adapt One 1. Copy a prompt that matches your task 2. Replace the role with YOUR product's role 3. Add 2-3 rules specific to your domain (tone, forbidden outputs, format) 4. Add 2-3 few-shot examples of ideal output 5. Test with 20 real queries, not just happy paths ## FAQ **Can I copy prompts from these repos commercially?** Most are MIT-licensed or public domain - check each repo's license. Attribution is good practice. **System prompt vs user prompt?** System prompt sets persistent behavior (role, rules, format); user prompts are the per-request input. Use the system slot for everything that should not change. **How long should a system prompt be?** 200-800 words typically. Too long wastes tokens and dilutes focus; too short misses rules.