General guidelines for agentic development

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated June 5, 2026
  • 1 minute to read

    • General guidelines for agentic development on the ServiceNow AI Platform cover prompt writing, context management, compliance validation, and development environment setup.

    Agentic development guidelines

    • Use clear, focused prompts with as much detail as possible to generate more accurate and relevant output.
    • If you're using Build Agent, include as much context as possible in your first prompt to enable more robust development. Include roles, data requirements, and success criteria.
    • When switching between two separate applications in Build Agent, specify the new application context.
    • Save your successful prompts to repurpose and reuse. For more information, see Example prompts for vibe coding and AI-assisted development.
    • Save your session to quickly resume working where you stopped.
    • Use the Build Agent chat panel for iterative development.
    • Validate compliance using Vault Console to check audit trails and security settings before deployment.
    • Develop in a sandbox using Developer Sandboxes for isolation and safety, or use a Personal Development Instance (PDI) or a non-production instance to avoid production deployment.