prompt-compilation — The Compile-Readiness Gate

"It's unproductive to launch optimization runs using a poorly designed program or a bad metric." — DSPy core team [dspy.ai/learn/optimization/overview/]

"Compile when you can measure. The optimizer maximizes your metric — garbage metric in, garbage prompt out." — this skill's operating principle (synthesized from the line above + DSPy Case C)

This is an enhancement-overlay decision skill. It answers exactly one question the broad [[dspy]] library skill buries under API surface: have you earned the right to run an optimizer yet, and which one? It produces a go / no-go gate plus an optimizer pick. It defers every implementation detail — Signature syntax, module choice, compile() calls, save/deploy — to [[dspy]] and the full workflow in [[agentsop-dspy]]. It defers metric construction to [[agentsop-metric-design]]; this skill only checks the metric exists and is validated, then uses it as the gate.

The trap it removes: people reach for MIPROv2(auto="heavy") because the API is right there, before they have a metric worth maximizing or enough data to avoid memorization. Compilation is a hyperparameter search costing hundreds-to-thousands of LM calls ($2–$40+, minutes-to-hours) [dspy.ai/faqs/]. Spending that on an un-validated metric or 8 examples is pure waste.