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Kai Best Practices

Effective Prompting

Provide Business Context

Kai knows your schema but not your business rules. Include domain context for better results.

Weak Strong
“Calculate Q3 revenue” “Calculate Q3 revenue from orders where status = 'completed', excluding VAT in tax_amount”
“Show customer churn” “Calculate monthly churn from subscriptions where end_date is not null and churn_reason != ‘upgrade’”

Pro tip: Have Kai update your table metadata with business definitions—future queries benefit automatically.

Plan Before Building

For complex tasks, ask Kai to outline its approach first:

"I need to build a customer lifetime value model. First outline which tables you'll use and how you'll join them. Don't execute anything yet."

Iterate

Don’t expect production-ready code on the first try:

  1. Request initial approach
  2. Review output
  3. Refine: “Now optimize the join, add null handling, and include comments”

Be Specific

Vague Specific
“Fix the extractor” “Analyze job failure for config keboola.ex-shopify (ID: 12345)—why is the refunds endpoint timing out?”
“Document this” “Document transformation tr-customer-metrics for new team members, focusing on business logic”

Development Workflow

Use Dev Branches

Test changes safely by creating a development branch in the Keboola UI, then working with Kai in that branch. Review changes before merging to production.

Manage Context

  • One topic per chat — don’t mix unrelated tasks
  • Reset when stuck — if Kai gets confused after 2-3 tries, start fresh with clearer context
  • Let Kai read logs — instead of pasting, use "Read the latest job log for ex-google-analytics"

Security

Do:

  • Let Kai handle credentials through secure configuration forms—never type secrets directly in chat
  • Say “I’ll provide the API key when you prompt me” and Kai will use the secure configuration interface
  • Review every tool approval before confirming
  • Use dev branches for testing

Don’t:

  • Paste credentials, API keys, or passwords in plain text chat messages
  • Blindly approve actions
  • Assume Kai knows about other projects (it only sees your current project)

What to Avoid

  • Don’t argue with a confused Kai — reset the conversation instead
  • Don’t skip verification — always review business logic, data quality rules, and production deployments
  • Don’t expect cross-project knowledge — Kai only sees your current project

Team Tips

  • Save and share successful prompts with teammates
  • Use Kai to onboard new team members: "Give a new engineer an overview of this project's architecture"
  • Keep project documentation updated so Kai has better context for everyone
  • Use thumbs up/down buttons to provide feedback