System Prompt Expert FAQs

Question 1

What is the 'Right Altitude' for a prompt?

Accepted Answer

It is the 'Goldilocks zone' where a prompt provides enough specific instruction to be useful without being so rigid that it breaks the agent's ability to handle edge cases.

Question 2

How should tool guidance be written in a system prompt?

Accepted Answer

Tool guidance should be unambiguous, providing specific conditions for use and decision trees for complex scenarios so the agent never has to guess which tool is appropriate.

Question 3

What is Context Engineering in system prompts?

Accepted Answer

Context Engineering is the practice of finding the 'minimum effective dose' of information—the smallest set of high-signal tokens—that maximizes the likelihood of a desired AI outcome.

Question 4

How do I handle curly braces in Python-based prompts?

Accepted Answer

Because the system uses Python's .format() method, you must use double braces {{}} for code samples or literal text to avoid KeyError exceptions, while using single braces {} for actual template variables.

Question 5

Why does this skill recommend a hybrid Markdown and XML structure?

Accepted Answer

A hybrid approach uses Markdown headers for human readability and XML tags for clear content delineation, making prompts both developer-friendly and easily parseable by the LLM.

System Prompt Expert

About

Key Features

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System Prompt Expert

About

Key Features

Use Cases