Cortex MCP Prompt Library

The teams getting the most value from the MCP have developed prompt patterns that fit naturally into their workflows. We've collated the most effective prompt patterns we've seen across different roles and workflows to build the list of prompt examples below. Think of it as a starting point for building your own prompt library, one that fits the specific needs of your team and organization.

Prompts for engineers

The best prompts for engineers eliminate context switching at the moments when focus matters most.

Understanding unfamiliar services

Tell me about the [service-name] service, including who owns it, what it does, and where the documentation lives.

This query pulls everything from your Cortex catalog at once. You get ownership, a description of what the service does, links to documentation, and the team's communication channels. Instead of hunting across wikis, Slack, and GitHub, you have the context you need to start working.

Show me the dependencies for [service-name]. Which services does it depend on, and which services depend on it?

Understanding the dependency graph is critical when planning changes with potential downstream impact. This prompt reveals what might break and which teams need to be in the conversation before you make a move.

Which Scorecard is [service-name] failing, and what do I need to fix? This prompt transforms maintenance from reactive to proactive. Instead of waiting for your platform team to flag issues or discovering gaps during an incident, you see exactly which Scorecards are failing and what specific checks need attention. You can address production readiness, security, or documentation gaps on your own schedule, before they become blockers.

During code review

Check the Scorecards for [service-name]. Does this service meet our production readiness standards?

Starting here when you're unfamiliar with a service changes the conversation. If the service is already failing key Scorecards, you'll know which questions to ask and where the risks actually are.

Show me recent incidents for [service-name].

Past incidents tell you where a service has been fragile. When you see that history before approving changes, you can evaluate whether the PR addresses root causes or introduces new failure modes.

Tracking your work

What Initiatives are assigned to the Engineering team, and what's the status of each?

This condenses your weekly status check into a single query. Run it at the start of your week or during standup and you get a complete picture of your Initiative commitments and their current state. Instead of navigating to the Cortex web UI or mentally tracking what you're responsible for, you see everything assigned to you without leaving your IDE or chat interface.

Show me the details for Initiative [initiative-name]. What still needs to be done?

When you're ready to make progress on a specific Initiative, this surfaces the remaining tasks and their current state. You know exactly what's left and where to focus.

Prompts for engineering leaders

The best prompts for engineering leaders are about trends, patterns, and the health of systems; these prompts surface the signals that inform strategic decisions.

Understanding team health

Show me MTTR trends over the last quarter. How has it changed?

Incident response either gets faster or it doesn't. If MTTR is climbing, something in your system has degraded. This prompt gives you the trend line and a clear signal to investigate process or tooling gaps.\

Which teams have the most failing Scorecards right now?

This surfaces which teams are struggling with compliance or buried in technical debt. The answer reveals where support and resources should flow. Instead of waiting for teams to escalate problems or discovering issues through incident patterns, you have a clear view of which teams need help right now. That visibility lets you have proactive conversations about priorities, staffing, or process changes before compliance gaps become production incidents.

How has deployment frequency changed over the last six months for the Platform team?

Deployment frequency serves as a proxy for both velocity and confidence. When you track this metric over time, you get clear evidence of whether your investments in tooling and process improvements are actually working. If deployment frequency is climbing, teams are shipping faster and feel confident doing it. If it's flat or declining despite investments, you need to investigate whether new tools are adding friction, whether processes are getting in the way, or whether something else is slowing teams down. The trend line tells you whether to double down on your current approach or change course.

Tracking AI adoption impact

How has AI adoption impacted MTTR and deployment frequency over the last quarter?

This connects AI spending directly to concrete business outcomes. When you run this query, you're comparing metrics before and after AI tool adoption. If MTTR dropped and deployment frequency increased after rolling out Copilot or similar tools, you have hard data to justify continued investment and potentially expand the rollout.

If the metrics haven't moved despite adoption, you need to ask different questions: Are teams actually using the tools? Do they need more training? Are the tools solving the wrong problems? The comparison gives you evidence to either double down on your AI strategy or course-correct before spending more.

Which teams have adopted AI tools, and how does their velocity compare to teams that haven't?

This reveals whether AI adoption is actually delivering the productivity gains you expected. The comparison between adopters and non-adopters gives you a clear control group to measure impact. If teams using AI tools show meaningfully higher velocity, you have validation to expand the rollout and invest more.

If there's no significant difference, or if adopters are actually slower, you need to understand why. Maybe teams need better training on how to use the tools effectively. Maybe the tools work better for certain types of work than others. Maybe adoption is superficial and teams aren't integrating the tools into their actual workflows. The data points you toward the right interventions.

Spotting bottlenecks

Where are the biggest bottlenecks slowing down the Checkout team?

When a team's velocity drops unexpectedly, this surfaces the patterns that sprint metrics miss: services with high incident rates, missing documentation, or blocked Initiatives. You get signal, not speculation.

Show me services with the highest incident rates in the last month.

High incident rates point to deeper reliability issues. This tells you where to invest in stability before those services become everyone's problem.

Prompts for platform teams

The best prompts for platform teams show you where adoption is working, where it's stalled, and which teams need support.

Tracking standards adoption

Show me how teams are performing on the Production Readiness Scorecard. Which services are failing?

This gives you a complete view of compliance across the organization without manually checking each team's services. You see which teams are struggling to meet standards and which services create the most risk. The answer tells you where to focus your enablement efforts and which conversations to prioritize. Instead of discovering compliance gaps reactively during incidents or audits, you have a real-time picture of organizational health.

Which services don't have runbooks, and who owns them?

Missing runbooks are incidents waiting to happen. When something breaks at 3 AM, responders need clear guidance to restore service quickly. This prompt shows you exactly which services lack that critical documentation and who's responsible for creating it.

With this information, you can prioritize outreach based on service criticality. A critical payment service without a runbook demands immediate attention, while a lower-tier internal tool might wait. Instead of discovering documentation gaps during an active incident when every minute counts, you can systematically close them before they cost you hours of downtime.

Show me AI maturity Scorecard results across all teams. Where are the biggest gaps?

If you're driving AI adoption, this reveals which aspects of maturity need attention. The gaps tell you whether teams need training, tooling, process changes, or something else entirely.

Managing Initiatives

Which services are blocking completion of the [initiative-name] Initiative?

When an initiative stalls, this identifies exactly which services or teams are holding things up. Now you know where to focus your attention and who needs support.

Show me progress on the Kubernetes Migration Initiative. Which teams are on track, and which are falling behind?

This surfaces real-time status across every team involved in the initiative without sending Slack messages or requesting manual updates. You get an immediate picture of which teams are making progress, which are stuck, and which haven't started. That visibility lets you direct support and resources to the teams that need it most, rather than treating every team the same or discovering delays only when deadlines slip.

Give me a plan to get the Checkout team back on track with production readiness.

Once you've identified a team falling behind, this generates a concrete action plan based on the specific gaps in their Scorecards and service metadata. You move straight to solutions.

Gap analysis

Which critical services are missing SLOs?

SLOs are foundational to reliability. This scopes the gap and identifies which services should be prioritized based on business impact before an incident forces the conversation.

Show me services without proper monitoring. What's missing?

Monitoring gaps are blind spots waiting to bite you during incidents. This surfaces which services need instrumentation and what specific monitoring is absent, so you can build a targeted remediation plan.

Prompts for SREs

The best prompts for SRE teams focus on proactive incident prevention or responding quickly to a incident in progress.

During incidents

Who's on call for [service-name] right now, and when was it last deployed?

The first question in almost every incident. One prompt gets you the owner, the on-call contact, and recent deployment history. You can escalate or start investigating without hunting through five different systems.

Show me recent deploys and changes for [service-name].

Most incidents trace back to recent changes. This gives you a timeline pointing to likely culprits so you can focus your investigation on what actually changed.

Show me the incident readiness Scorecard for [service-name]. Are we prepared to respond?

Not all services are equally ready for incidents. This tells you whether runbooks exist, whether monitoring is in place, and whether escalation paths are documented. You know what tools you have before you need them.

Proactive reliability work

Show me services with the highest MTTR in the last month.

High MTTR means certain services are consistently difficult to debug or restore. This tells you where reliability improvements will have the biggest impact on your time and your team's sanity.

Which critical services have had the most incidents recently?

Frequent incidents signal deeper problems that incident response won't fix. This helps you spot patterns and prioritize services that need architectural investigation, not just patches.

Show me services that are missing runbooks or escalation procedures.

When incidents happen, responders need clear guidance. This identifies documentation gaps that will slow response time before they cost you hours during an outage.

Prompts for security engineering teams

The best prompts for security engineers help them monitor, audit, and enforce security posture across services.

Compliance monitoring

Which services are failing our SOC-2 Scorecard?

This gives you a view of SOC-2 compliance across the organization without manually checking each team's services. The answer tells you where to focus your efforts and which conversations to prioritize. Instead of discovering compliance gaps reactively during incidents or audits, you have a real-time picture of organizational health.

Proactive security health

Which services have no on-call rotation configured in PagerDuty?

When incidents happen, it's important to have on-call information readily available to ensure a fast response time.

What is the progress on my Security Initiative and what are some quick wins?

This surfaces real-time status for an Initiative without requesting manual updates from team members. You get an immediate picture of which entities are making progress and which are not. That visibility lets you direct support and resources to the teams that need it most.

List all services with open vulnerabilities labeled CRITICAL or HIGH

This helps you quickly determine which services need attention.

Prompts for Product Managers

The best prompts for product managers focus on visibility, delivery health, and compliance to engineering standards that affect product velocity and quality.

Delivery and health metrics

Which services in the [product area] domain are failing their DORA metrics?

If you organize your data in Cortex by product area, Product Managers can get quick insight into which services in that product area domain are failing DORA metrics.

Initiatives and adoption tracking

Give me all currently active initiatives and ideas for how I can improve them

This helps product managers track progress on key initiatives and ensure teams are moving toward business goals.

Give me links to the docs and runbooks for [repository]

This helps product managers who need to find the documentation for a feature's related repository.