Working with Mentor in ODC: Lessons from Practice

Mentor Studio and Mentor Web have been generally available in ODC since April 2026 and is becoming an increasingly useful useful AI-assisted development tool within the ODC development experience. This article focuses specifically on Mentor Studio or also called Mentor in the IDE, (the popup or side panel inside ODC Studio, as shown in the screendump below).

Mentor is already capable of creating and modifying significant parts of an application, but getting good results requires understanding how it works and how to communicate the desired outcome clearly.

This blog is based on my practical experience using it for ODC development.

Use Mentor for patterns and repetitive work

One of the areas where Mentor is particularly effective is creating common OutSystems patterns quickly. Static entities, popup Web Blocks, lists, and screens looking like on existing screens can be created in a fraction of the time it would take to build everything from scratch.

Another useful scenario is resolving large numbers of errors after a structural change. For example, changing an entity can result in more than 100 errors across an application. Having Mentor analyse and resolve these errors can save considerable manual effort.

The important point is that Mentor is not necessarily about doing something that a developer cannot do. Its value is often in accelerating work that the developer already knows how to perform.

Good prompting makes a difference

The quality of the result depends strongly on the quality of the instruction. When modifying an existing screen, I find it useful to structure the prompt by first identifying the screen, block, panel or container, followed by what is currently working and finally what should change.

I also recommend always asking Mentor for a plan first. This makes it possible to review the proposed approach before changes are made and provides an opportunity to correct any misunderstanding of the requirement.