The "prompts are code" framing is right, and the compile analogy holds further than people think. Real code has structure: typed parameters, return types, separated concerns. A raw prose prompt is more like a shell one-liner with everything inlined. It works, but it breaks when you try to reuse or modify it.

If you take the compile idea seriously, the next step is to give prompts the same structure code has: separate the role from the context from the constraints from the output spec. Then compile that into XML for the model.

I built flompt (https://github.com/Nyrok/flompt) as a tool for this. Canvas where you place typed blocks (role, objective, constraints, output format, etc.) and compile to structured XML. Basically an IDE for prompts, not a text editor. A star would help a lot if this resonates.