Prompt Guide

Tips, ideas, and best practices for building with Sola AI

Sola AI helps you build, explore, and investigate your security posture. A clear prompt gives Sola the context it needs to deliver the right output, faster and with better focus.

This guide explains how to write effective prompts for Sola AI. It shares practical tips and examples, drawn from real usage in the field, to help you get better results.

For now, the focus is on building canvases with Sola AI. More best practices will be added over time.

Prompting with Sola AI is a collaborative process.

Start with a clear direction, refine with follow-ups, and use the recommendations Sola provides to shape the right app, canvas, or insight.

How to use this guide

Prompting in Sola AI can serve different goals, from creating new apps, to building canvases, to investigating risks, and creating workflows.

This first version focuses on canvas best practices. The recommendations are not strict rules, but tips you can apply as needed to get better results.

Canvas best practices

These best practices are grouped into three themes: Start, Refine, Expand, and Troubleshoot.

1. Start

Begin with broad prompts to set the direction.

Start broad, then iterate

Provide Sola AI with a general theme and refine your prompt step-by-step until the output matches your needs.

For example,

• “What are my top AWS security issues?”

• “Show me insights on GitHub access risks.”

Keep prompts short and clear

Sola AI works best with concise prompts. While prompts can be up to ~3000 characters, shorter inputs are more effective and easier to refine.

For example:

• Less effective: “Create a canvas with detailed breakdowns of all services, including every AWS account, Okta user, GitHub repo, permissions, vulnerabilities, and historical changes…”

• Better: “Show me my top AWS security issues, grouped by account, with a chart of failed logins.”

Reference your data

Start with referencing specific queries and ask Sola AI to create a canvas based on these queries or app data.

For example,

“Create a canvas based on the queries for inactive Okta users and failed logins.”

As a best practice, before starting a new canvas, make sure relevant queries already exist for what you want to build. If any are missing, Sola AI will complete them automatically as part of the canvas creation.

2. Refine

Shape Sola’s output to better match your needs.

Add layout and structure early

Include any layout or style that you have in mind as early as possible, even in the first prompt. The earlier you set expectations, the better Sola can match your vision.

For example,

• “Show me my top AWS security issues, split into sub-pages by logical grouping, and make it Star Trek themed.”

Give Sola context

Use Sola terminology, such as “canvas”, “app”, “app queries”, and “integrations”, to help Sola AI understand your intent.

Be specific about chart types or views if you want them.

For example,

• “table of admin users”

• “bar chart of open vulnerabilities by repo”

Use interactive elements

Sola canvases can include interactive features to make insights more actionable.

For example:

• Add links to view the underlying data or queries.

• Highlight data trends with arrows and colors.

• Include toggles or tabs for different views.

• Add insights that summarize trends automatically.

3. Expand

Grow and explore beyond the basics.

Invite clarification

Ask Sola AI to confirm before building. This helps align expectations and save time

For example,

• "Before you start building, make sure everything is clear. Ask me any clarification question you might have"

Ask the Sola AI copilot

When in doubt, ask Sola AI what it can do. This will help you discover new directions.

For example,

• “What kind of canvases can I build from this app?”

• “What insights can I generate from this data?”

• “How do workflows work?”

• “What can I do with canvases?”

4. Troubleshoot

Fix issues and polish your canvas.

Even with clear prompts, canvases may need some adjustments. With Sola AI, if something doesn’t look right, you have the tools to fix it.

Refine the prompt

Re-run with a smaller scope or clearer instructions.

Tweak the layout

Resize charts, adjust text, or move elements directly in the canvas editor.

Check for UX issues

Adjust overflowing text, small buttons in tabs, or charts that don’t fit well.

Use queries as building blocks

If a visualization isn’t working, make sure the underlying query returns the data you expect.

Iterate with Sola AI

Ask the copilot to adjust or fix issues, such as:

• “Make the chart labels shorter.”

• “Increase the tab button size.”

• “Move the legend to the right side.”

Advanced ideas

Once you’re comfortable with the basics, try creative prompts to push canvases further:

• “Build a CISO dashboard and a separate engineering dashboard, each on its own tab.”

• “Make a canvas themed for executives with high-level summaries and traffic-light colors for risk.”

• “Add a toggle that switches between today’s results and 30-day trends.”

• “Show MFA adoption over time with arrows indicating increases and decreases.”

• “Add links from charts to the queries powering them.”

This guide will continue to grow with more best practices.