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Welcome

This guide walks you through how to use the Poolside platform effectively. This content is designed to be followed live with members of the Poolside team or a designated trainer from your organization during a scheduled training session. You may also use it as a self-guided resource.

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Poolside Web Assistant

Web Assistant
  • Purpose: General Q&A, browser-based
  • Limitations: No file system integration
  • Strengths: Suggests solutions, creates plans, generates code

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Poolside Assistant in the IDE

VS Code Poolside Assistant Toolbar
  • Purpose: Code generation and project assistance
  • Limitations: Context window size, agentic patterns
  • Strengths: Reading and writing project files, suggesting solutions, generating new code
  • Available in VS Code and Visual Studio

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Agenda

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Session #1: What is Poolside?

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Group session (45 minutes)

We will walk through a short Poolside presentation together.After the presentation, we will pause for Q&A and discussion.

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Session #2: Crafting clear, specific prompts

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Group session (45 minutes)

We will begin by experimenting with different prompting styles in the Poolside Web Assistant.How to:Open the Poolside Web Assistant in your browser using your organization’s instance URL, for example:https://chat.poolside.yourdomain.comSign in using your organization’s OIDC provider.After signing in, start a new conversation and try the example prompts below.

Full Stack Software Engineer

Example Prompts:
  • Explain the differences between RESTful APIs and gRPC in terms of performance, ease of use, scalability, and typical use cases.
  • Write a Python script that reads a CSV of users, transforms the data, and writes the cleaned results to a new CSV.
  • Compare SQL vs NoSQL databases in data modeling, consistency, scalability, and query flexibility.
  • Describe the differences between unit, integration, and end-to-end tests.
  • Write a React component for a search input box that filters a list of items as the user types.
  • Explain concurrency vs parallelism in programming.

Hardware Engineer

Example Prompts:
  • Compare using an FPGA vs a microcontroller for implementing a control system.
  • Write a Verilog module that acts as a calculator. Include a testbench.
  • Describe techniques for reducing power consumption in embedded systems.
  • Write an embedded C function for setting, clearing, and toggling specific bits.
  • Explain stack vs heap usage in embedded C.
  • Write a MATLAB function converting GPS to ECEF coordinates.
After completing the example prompts, create a new conversation and try your own. We will then pause and discuss the results together.
See our Prompting Guide and Example Prompts for further reading.

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Group lunch (45 minutes)

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Session #3: Using Poolside in the IDE

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Group session (45 minutes)

Download the Poolside Assistant extension in your preferred IDE.Open Install Poolside Assistant and follow the steps.After installing the extension, open an existing project or create a new project with at least one file.
Your project must contain at least one file before you can use Poolside Assistant.

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Session #4: Using tasks in Poolside Assistant

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Group session (30 minutes)

We will walk through a live task demo and review slash commands within a task.

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Session #5: Overview of the Poolside API

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Group session (30 minutes)

Poolside provides a comprehensive API compatible with OpenAI’s API specification. For more information, see API Examples.

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Session #6: Exploring use cases for your team

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Group session (45 minutes)

During this session, explore how Poolside can be leveraged within your team.Common use cases to consider:

  • Unit testing: Generate unit tests for existing functions
  • Feature development: Construct new features using tasks
  • Code summarization: Summarize large files or unfamiliar code
  • SDLC automation: Use the Poolside API to augment workflows
  • Code documentation: Generate inline or external documentation
  • Code translation: Modernize legacy systems
  • Code refactoring: Improve structure and maintainability
In the left navigation, see Use Cases to explore detailed examples and walkthroughs.

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Session #7: Build with Poolside

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Group session (1 hour)

Break into groups and build a small project using the IDE extension.Suggested ideas:

  • Remake Conway’s Game of Life in the browser using JavaScript
  • Build a meeting room scheduler
  • Create a basic AI resource sharing app
  • Build an API test harness
  • Create a basic LLM chat app with the Poolside API
  • Construct a Git repository scanner in Python
The session concludes with a hackathon show-and-tell.