Every prompt in PromptVault started with a concrete job: write a release note, review a pull request, explain a regex, migrate a codebase. If the prompt couldn't do a specific job, it didn't make the cut.
The placeholders are the real insight. Instead of Write a summary of this project, the prompt says: Summarise {project} for a {audience} audience in {tone}. Focus on {aspect}. Fill the braces, get the output.
We keep the catalogue in plain Markdown with a machine-readable index. You can script against it, or just copy and paste — both work.
If you take one lesson: prompts are more like formulas than poems. The quality of the skeleton decides the quality of the output. Good placeholders beat clever phrasing every time.