Prompting best practices - Maia Documentation

This guide explains how to get the best results from your conversations with Maia Team, your agentic data team. If you’re new to Maia Team, check out the Maia Team overview to learn more about what it can do. The quality of Maia Team‘s responses depends significantly on how you write and structure your prompts. Following these best practices will help Maia Team understand your intent and deliver more accurate results. When chatting with Maia Team, write your prompts in natural language. The Maia Team chat panel supports Markdown formatting, which allows you to format your messages so they are easier for you to read. If you want to write something inside underscores, for example to tell Maia Team to name a column _customers_, enclose it in backticks or quote marks so that the underscores are visible.

Be specific and provide context

Name resources explicitly: Reference specific tables, columns, pipelines, and components by their exact names rather than using vague descriptions.
Include relevant details: Specify data types, expected formats, business rules, or constraints that affect the task.
State your goal: Explain what you’re trying to achieve, not just what you want Maia Team to do. This helps Maia Team make better decisions when multiple approaches exist.
Use the @ symbol: Reference specific files in your project using @filename to direct Maia Team‘s attention.
Use slash commands: Use slash commands like /explain, /fix, /optimize, and /document for common tasks.
Attach images and PDFs: Provide additional context by attaching images and PDFs to your messages.

The table below gives some examples of less effective prompts, and how to improve them to get the best response from Maia Team.

Less effective	More effective
Join these tables	Join the `customers` and `orders` tables on `customer_id`, keeping only customers with at least one order
Filter the data	Filter `transactions` to include only rows where `status` is `completed` and `amount` is greater than 100
Create a pipeline	Create an orchestration pipeline that loads data from Salesforce contacts into the `staging_contacts` table daily
Add a calculation	Add a calculator component that creates a `profit_margin` column calculated as `(revenue - cost) / revenue`
Clean up the data	Remove rows where `email` is null or doesn’t contain an @ symbol, and trim whitespace from the `name` column
Connect to the API	Create a custom connector to extract data from the HubSpot Contacts API using OAuth2 authentication and load it into `raw_hubspot_contacts`
Fix this pipeline	The `daily_sales` pipeline is failing at the join component—check why the join keys might not be matching
What does this do?	Explain what the `weekly_inventory_sync` pipeline does, including its data sources and output tables
Why isn’t it working?	Why is the `customer_dedupe` transformation returning fewer rows than expected after the join?

Use plan mode for complex tasks

When working on complex tasks or when you want more control, enable Plan mode using the toggle at the bottom of the chat panel. Maia Team will automatically suggest switching to plan mode if it thinks your prompt is complex enough to require planning. When this happens, a message will appear in the Maia Team chat panel—click Accept to allow Maia Team to use plan mode. In plan mode, Maia Team will:

Analyze your request and present a detailed plan before making changes
Allow you to review, modify, or approve the plan
Only execute changes after you’ve confirmed the approach

When manually prompting Maia Team to work on complex tasks, give step-by-step instructions rather than requesting everything at once. For example:

Start with the first step in your process, e.g. “Create a transformation pipeline that reads from the raw_orders table”.
Request additional transformations one at a time, e.g. “Add a filter to keep only orders from the last 30 days” and then “Sort the orders from the last 30 days by date”.

We recommend validating your pipeline at each step. This approach allows you to check Maia Team‘s work as you go, and make corrections early if necessary.

Iterate and refine

If Maia Team‘s response doesn’t match your expectations:

Provide feedback: Tell Maia Team what’s wrong or what you expected instead.
Add constraints: Specify requirements that weren’t clear in your original prompt.
Rephrase the request: Try explaining the same goal from a different angle.

Expand this box to watch our video about iterating and refining your prompts.

Video

Troubleshooting chats with Maia Team

If Maia Team doesn’t follow your standards:

Check that your context file is in .matillion/maia/rules/ and within the character limit.
Check that rules are written as clear directives.
Explicitly reference standards in your prompt.

If skills aren’t activating:

Review the skill description for clarity and relevant keywords.
Test with prompts that directly relate to the skill’s purpose.

If Maia Team‘s responses are inconsistent:

Start a new chat to clear potentially conflicting context.
Simplify your request and add complexity incrementally.
Use plan mode to review Maia Team‘s approach before execution.

Expand this box to watch our video about improving your prompts when chatting with Maia Team.

Video