PROMPTING.md ruleset

Instructions for designing, writing, reviewing, and testing documents whose operational reader is an AI model.

Apply this standard to system and developer prompts, task prompts, repository instructions, skills, agent profiles, tool descriptions, plans, specifications, memory and state documents, evaluators, and other AI-facing control text.

Select the rules relevant to the artifact and deployment, using the surface overlays in section 20.

Do not apply this standard mechanically to ordinary reader-facing prose. Follow the current specification of the target product for syntax, loading, precedence, tools, and runtime behavior.

Evaluate each deployed artifact in its target configuration.

Priorities

When requirements conflict, lower-numbered priorities win: