Use AI prompts to explain and refactor your code

Use pre-written prompts to explain code, find problems, and refactor your code. JetBrains Rider provides project-specific context, such as the languages and technologies used in your project.

You can also define your own custom prompts and add them to the AI Actions menu.

Explain code

Select a code fragment and right-click it to open the context menu.
Select AI Actions and then Explain Code.
The AI Assistant tool window will open to provide you with an explanation.
As you can see in the example above, the assistant correctly recognized and explained the bubble sort algorithm.

Suggest refactoring

Select a code fragment and right-click it to open the context menu.
Select AI Actions and then Suggest Refactoring.
The AI chat will open to offer you refactoring suggestions.
In the field with the refactored code, click See Diff and Apply to open the diff viewer. To skip the diff viewing step, expand the list next to See Diff and Apply and select Apply Immediately.
In the diff viewer, use Unified or Two-Side view to review the suggested changes.
If you like the result, click Accept in the gutter to move the selected AI-generated code snippets to the source file, or click Accept all to fully replace the originally selected code fragment. Otherwise, close the diff viewer to skip the suggested refactoring.

Find problems

Select a code fragment and right-click it to open the context menu.
Select AI Actions and then Find Problems.
The AI chat will open to show the potential issues you may want to look into.

Explain build errors and warnings

If you have any warnings or errors in the Build tool window Ctrl+W, A, you can select any message, right-click it and choose Explain error message with AI:

JetBrains Rider: Explain build warning with AI

Add your own prompts to prompts library

You can add your own prompts to the prompts library and use them via the AI Actions menu.

Do one of the following:
- Right-click anywhere in the editor to open the context menu, then go to AI Actions | Edit User Prompts.
- Press Alt+Enter, select AI Actions, and click Add your prompts.
- Press Ctrl+Alt+S to open the IDE settings and then select Tools | AI Assistant | Prompt Library.
Click to create a new prompt.
In the text field, write the prompt.
If needed, click the $SELECTION variable to add a Markdown-formatted code block with current code selection and language name to the new prompt.
Edit the new prompt name.
Select the first checkbox if you want AI Assistant to wait for you to make additional input in the chat after invoking the prompt.
Keep the second checkbox if you want your new prompt to be listed in the AI Actions menu.
Click Apply.

Once you create a prompt, you can edit or delete it at any time.

You can also select a prompt from the list and move it up or down to change the order in which the prompts are displayed.

Last modified: 24 April 2024