domains / families / agent-tooling / agent-prompt-patterns

agent-prompt-patterns

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Battle-tested prompt patterns for production AI agents. Covers consumer-first design, deletion test, cascading validation, advisory mode tiers, proof-of-work enforcement, heartbeat protocol, contradiction detection, WAL protocol, rule escalation ladder, and cross-validation patterns. Use when designing agent behavior, enforcing reliability, or building agent operating manuals.

When to use

• Designing a new agent's behavioral rules and operating manual
• An agent is hallucinating completions, skipping steps, or claiming work it didn't do
• Building multi-agent pipelines where output quality compounds (or collapses)
• Setting up human-in-the-loop approval tiers for different risk levels
• Enforcing reliability in automated workflows (cron jobs, scheduled tasks, pipelines)
• Writing AGENTS.md or operating manuals for production agent workspaces
• Debugging why an agent keeps violating rules you've already stated
• Evaluating whether an agent should exist at all (deletion test)

When not to use

• One-shot prompts with no agent persistence — these patterns assume continuity
• Pure chatbot / conversational UX with no action-taking capability
• Academic prompt engineering research — these are production patterns, not benchmarks
• Agents with no filesystem, no tool access, and no side effects — nothing to harness
• You're still in the "make it work at all" phase — get basic functionality first, then harden

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