Manicode

Manicode is a secure coding company founded by Jim Manico, a longtime application security trainer and OWASP volunteer. Its flagship product, Manicode Forge, ships a catalog of 328 system prompts that change how AI coding assistants generate code.

The problem it targets is straightforward. Frontier models are trained to produce working code, not safe code. Ask an assistant for a login endpoint and you often get a version that builds, passes its tests, and still ships an SQL injection, a plaintext password comparison, and no rate limiting. Manicode's own testing found that even when models are told to write secure code, they still introduce vulnerabilities 23% of the time.

Each prompt is a system instruction tuned to one framework. You set it as the system message in your IDE, coding agent, or API call, and the model's output shifts toward parameterized queries, password hashing, validation, and access control. The prompts are plain markdown files, so there's no plugin to install and no vendor to lock into.

The main limits are the pricing model and the fact that prompts are guidance, not enforcement. Plans start at $1,000 per prompt with a five-prompt minimum, and Teams pricing begins at $10,000, which keeps the tool aimed at engineering teams and companies rather than solo hobbyists. A prompt steers the model but can't guarantee it follows every rule, so review still matters.

Getting Started

1. Book a call with Manicode and pick the frameworks your team actually ships.
2. Receive the prompt files for those frameworks in the model variant you use, such as Claude, Codex, Gemini, or Copilot.
3. Set the prompt as the system instruction in your tool, whether that's Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or a direct API call.
4. Ask for code the way you normally would, then test it with a security-sensitive request to confirm the controls show up.
5. Roll the prompts out to the rest of the team and revisit them as the catalog updates.