Suggested Prompts & Conversation Starters
A blank input field is the biggest usability problem in conversational UI — users know what they want but not the words that produce it. Suggested prompts close that gap by offering the vocabulary inline. Done well, they become a navigation mechanism, not training wheels.
Prompts as articulation bridge
There's a gap users run into with every free-form AI interface — they know what they want, but not the exact words that will produce it. The "articulation barrier" is the cognitive distance between intent and prompt language, and it's the single biggest reason new users churn on chat-first products.
Suggested prompts exist to close that gap. They show the vocabulary, the shape, and the granularity of a well-formed request — not by teaching it, but by offering it inline. The best prompt sets feel less like tutorials and more like visible commands: scannable options that turn an open text field into a guided surface without removing the user's freedom to type anything else.
Structured commands like /fix and /explain are the precise end of this spectrum. They give power users a low-ambiguity shortcut once they've figured out the articulation.
Three Types of Prompts
Conversation Starters (Empty State)
- Shown when the chat is empty. Showcase the AI's range of capabilities:
- "Summarize this document" (demonstrates analysis)
- "Help me write an email to my team" (demonstrates creation)
- "What are the pros and cons of..." (demonstrates reasoning)
- Limit to 3-4 starters. More creates decision paralysis.
Follow-Up Suggestions (After AI Responds)
- Shown after each AI message. These should be contextual - based on what was just discussed:
- After a code explanation: "Show me an example", "What about edge cases?"
- After a summary: "Go deeper on point 3", "Turn this into bullet points"
Quick Actions (Persistent)
Always-visible buttons for common tasks: "New conversation", "Upload file", "Switch mode". These are traditional UI elements embedded in the conversational flow.
Dynamic Prompt Generation
Static prompts get stale. The best conversational UIs update suggestions based on context:
More sophisticated approaches: send the conversation to your AI with a meta-prompt asking it to generate 3 relevant follow-up questions.
Place suggested prompts directly above the input bar, not below the AI's response. Users' eyes naturally move from reading the response down to the input - prompts in that path get clicked 3-4x more than prompts near the message.