Supercharging Solution Architecture with GitHub Copilot Prompts Every Architect Should Know

As a Solution Architect, you’re often juggling high-level system design, reviewing code, drafting technical documentation, and ensuring that your solutions meet both business and technical requirements. GitHub Copilot, powered by advanced AI, isn’t just for developers—it can be a powerful assistant for Solution Architects too.

In this blog, we’ll explore how you can craft GitHub Copilot prompts to accelerate your architectural workflow, design decisions, and documentation.

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🚀 Why GitHub Copilot for Solution Architects?

While Copilot is commonly used by developers for code completion, it can do much more:

• Generate architectural patterns in code
• Create boilerplate documentation
• Suggest integration strategies
• Refactor proofs of concept
• Generate API specs
• Review and explain complex code blocks

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🧠 Strategic Prompts for Solution Architects

Here are some high-value prompts to try:

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1. Generate Architecture Boilerplate

Prompt:

plaintextCopyEditGenerate a clean microservices architecture using Node.js and Express, with a gateway, auth service, product service, and MongoDB.

Why it helps:
Quickly bootstraps a POC to demonstrate service boundaries and tech stack decisions.

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2. Design Integration Patterns

Prompt:

plaintextCopyEditDesign an integration flow between a CRM system and a billing system using event-driven architecture.

Output:
Copilot can sketch code for event producers, consumers, and even suggest using Kafka or Azure Service Bus.

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3. API Documentation and Spec Generation

Prompt:

plaintextCopyEditGenerate an OpenAPI 3.0 spec for a customer management API with endpoints for GET, POST, PUT, DELETE.

Why it helps:
Saves time writing Swagger files from scratch and promotes standardization.

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4. Translate Architecture to Infrastructure-as-Code

Prompt:

plaintextCopyEditWrite a Terraform template to deploy a 3-tier architecture on AWS with an ALB, EC2 app layer, and RDS.

Use Case:
Speeds up environment provisioning discussions and dev/test environments.

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5. Security Pattern Implementation

Prompt:

plaintextCopyEditImplement OAuth 2.0 authorization for a REST API in .NET Core.

Why it helps:
Validates that the architecture meets security compliance needs early.

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6. Code Review Summaries

Prompt:

plaintextCopyEditExplain what this 200-line TypeScript file does and highlight any potential design or security issues.

Benefit:
Speeds up understanding of inherited codebases or vendor-delivered code.

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7. Generate Infrastructure Diagrams

Prompt:

plaintextCopyEditCreate a Mermaid diagram for a cloud-native solution with frontend, backend, message queue, and database.

Example Output:

mermaidCopyEditgraph TD
  UI[Frontend App] --> API[Backend API]
  API --> MQ[Message Queue]
  API --> DB[(Database)]
  MQ --> Worker[Async Processor]

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💡 Tips for Better Prompts

• Be specific: Mention the tech stack, output format (e.g., Terraform, YAML, Mermaid).
• Break it down: Complex systems? Start with one component at a time.
• Use Copilot Chat: Interact with it like a junior architect—ask questions, refine outputs.

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📌 Real-World Scenarios

Scenario	Prompt Example
Azure Landing Zone	Create a Bicep file to deploy an Azure Landing Zone with policies
Performance Review	Suggest performance improvements for this Python-based data pipeline
Documentation	Generate an architectural decision record (ADR) for choosing Azure SQL over Cosmos DB

GitHub Copilot is not replacing architects—it’s enhancing their capabilities. With the right prompts, it becomes your architectural sidekick, helping you move faster from vision to validation. Whether you’re designing systems, documenting decisions, or validating code quality, Copilot can give you the extra edge.

Try out these prompts, tweak them to your needs, and make GitHub Copilot a strategic part of your architectural toolkit.