🤖 Turn a List of Cryptic API Error Codes Into Messages Users Actually Understand
An API returns technically correct but user-hostile errors like ERR_4471 or VALIDATION_FAILED_FIELD_MISMATCH, and the frontend either shows that raw code directly to users or falls back to a generic ‘Something went wrong’ for every single case. This prompt turns a whole error code list into clear, specific, user-facing copy in one pass.
🤖 The Prompt
I have a list of API error codes and need clear, user-facing messages for each one. Here's the list with technical context for each code: [paste: error code, the technical condition that triggers it, and any relevant detail - e.g. "ERR_4471: triggered when a discount code has already been redeemed by this account"] For each error code, write: 1. A user-facing message - clear, non-technical, no jargon, that explains what happened without blaming the user unnecessarily. 2. Where useful, a concrete next step the user can actually take (not just "please try again"). 3. A note on tone - should this be neutral/informational, or does it need a slightly apologetic tone (e.g. a payment failure vs. a simple validation notice)? Keep messages concise - one to two sentences each - and consistent in tone and terminology across the whole list, as if one person wrote all of them together.
✅ Why Batch-Processing the Whole List Matters
- Writing error messages one at a time, as each error is implemented, produces inconsistent tone and terminology across the app – doing the whole list together in one pass is what actually keeps the voice consistent.
- Forcing a concrete ‘next step’ for each message catches the codes that only have a generic ‘something went wrong’ today, which are usually the most frustrating ones for actual users to hit.
- The tone guidance (neutral vs. apologetic) prevents both a payment failure sounding needlessly casual and a minor validation notice sounding alarmingly dramatic.
⚠️ Before Shipping the Messages As-Is
- Have someone unfamiliar with the API’s internals read a few of the generated messages cold – if a message still requires knowing the underlying system to make sense, it needs another pass.
- Confirm none of the generated messages accidentally expose internal implementation details (table names, internal service names, stack-trace-like phrasing) that shouldn’t be user-facing.
Nobody using your product experiences an ‘error code’ — they experience whatever sentence you chose to show them instead, and that sentence deserves the same care as any other user-facing text.