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Overview

Shortcuts in Blink allow you to consolidate prompts that you use repeatedly into easily accessible, taggable shortcuts. This keeps you in flow without having to provide repetitive context through long prompts every time.

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How Shortcuts Work

Shortcuts help you:
  • Stay focused: Eliminate the need to retype common instructions or provide repetitive context, allowing you to maintain your development flow without interruption from lengthy prompt composition.
  • Maintain consistency: Ensure that Blink behaves the same way across similar tasks and projects by standardizing your instructions and preferences into reusable components.
  • Save time: Gain quick access to frequently used prompts and commands through simple tags, dramatically reducing the time spent on repetitive prompt writing and context setting.

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Personal vs Team Shortcuts

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Personal Shortcuts

Create shortcuts tailored specifically for your own workflow and preferences. These shortcuts remain private to your account and can be customized to match your individual development style and commonly used patterns.

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Team Shortcuts

  • Sharing: Team shortcuts are automatically accessible to everyone on your team, ensuring that standardized workflows and best practices can be easily distributed across all team members.
  • Editing permissions: Only the original creator of a team shortcut has permission to edit or modify it, maintaining consistency and preventing accidental changes to established team workflows.
  • Visibility: All team members can see and use team shortcuts, but they appear clearly labeled so you can distinguish between your personal shortcuts and those shared by your team.

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Effective Shortcut Examples

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Repository Context

Example shortcut: @coder/coder Point Blink to specific repositories you work with frequently: 
Focus on the coder/coder repository for all code analysis and changes

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Behavioral Instructions

Example shortcut: @product-expert Define how you want Blink to behave: 
Behave as a product expert who is inquisitive and asks clarifying questions before proposing a solution

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Command Workflows

Example shortcut: @pr-workflow Create shortcuts for common development tasks: 
When creating pull requests:
1. Run Prettier to format code
2. Create descriptive commit messages
3. Open as draft PR
4. Include testing notes

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Summarize Chat

Example shortcut: @summarize-chat Create summaries of long conversations to duplicate or fork relevant context into new chats: 
Summarize this entire chat conversation and format the output as a single XML code block with the following structure:
<chat_summary>
  <main_topic>Brief description of the primary topic discussed</main_topic>
  <key_decisions>List of important decisions made during the conversation</key_decisions>
  <current_status>Current state of the project or task</current_status>
  <next_steps>Planned next actions or remaining tasks</next_steps>
  <git_context>Current branch, repository, recent commits, or other relevant Git information</git_context>
  <important_context>Any critical context that should be preserved</important_context>
</chat_summary>

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Code Review Guidelines

Example shortcut: @code-review Establish consistent review standards: 
When reviewing code, focus on:
- Security implications
- Performance considerations
- Code maintainability
- Test coverage

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Best Practices

  • Be specific: Include clear, actionable instructions that leave no ambiguity about what you want Blink to do, ensuring consistent and predictable results every time you use the shortcut.
  • Add context: Provide relevant background information and situational details that help Blink understand not just what to do, but why and how it should approach the task.
  • Keep it focused: Design each shortcut to handle one specific workflow or behavior pattern rather than trying to combine multiple unrelated functions into a single shortcut.
  • Use descriptive tags: Choose shortcut names and tags that make them easy to find, organize, and remember, especially when you have many shortcuts or are working in a team environment.