v1.0 to v1.1

---

name: prepare-prompt

description: Prepare a prompt that hands this session's work to a fresh agent session — to continue it, check it, or pick up what was left open. Use when asked for a prompt or brief for the next session.

license: MIT

metadata:

---

# Prepare prompt

Write for a session holding only this text — no chat history, no memory of what was meant — and

make it as short as that reader allows: nothing it needs is cut for brevity, nothing else stays.

The reader is a fresh interactive session the user pastes it into; a subagent brief only when the

invocation asks for one, under the same rules.

## Input

The user's goal, in a line, plus this session. Draft at once; ask only what neither settles, one

question at a time, with a recommended answer.

## Content

A suggested order, every part optional: a part is never filled to exist, and two lines are a

complete prompt when two lines cover the case.

1. **Situation** — what exists that the next session builds on, and what is open or was missed,

each with its identifier (ticket URL, branch, commit, PR, task ids).

2. **Task and deliverable** — what to do, in what form to report or produce it (a chat report

with a given structure, a file, a code change) and, when the work continues, the check that

says it is done (a command, a criterion, a file to exist).

3. **Latitude and boundaries** — what it may decide alone, when deviating is fine, what it must

not touch (read-only, no git or tracker writes, files to ignore).

4. **Facts it cannot derive** — paths, the planning directory, docs to read, tool quirks with the

The deliverable form and the write boundaries are the usual gaps: check whether the case needs

them.

What stays and what goes:

- A fact the next session builds on takes one line, never how it was reached. Anything it will

- When its job is to check, verify or review something, this session's own conclusions about that

thing go entirely — they would steer the check. When its job is to continue the work, the

decisions it must build on stay, one line each.

- Point, never paste: what exists in a file or commit is referenced precisely (path and section,

hash), never copied. Only what lives nowhere — a decision made in the chat, a tool quirk, a

useful command — is written out. Never a credential: one the next session needs is named by

where it lives (env var, config path); one that lives nowhere, such as a key pasted in chat, is

left out and the prompt says to get it from the user.

- When an installed skill covers what the next session must do, the prompt opens with its slash

command and the rest follows as its arguments (`/refine-ticket 1234 …`) — not a description of

the procedure, nor prose like "run `/refine-ticket`", which cannot load a skill that blocks model

invocation. Verify it exists first. A subagent cannot run a slash command: its brief names the

skill to invoke instead, and a task whose skill blocks model invocation stays with an

interactive session.

## Form

Plain imperative prose in paragraphs, no headings, bullets for lists. Agent-facing, so no

conversational voice. Print it as one fenced block, commands and paths inline in backticks (never

the opening slash command), never a nested fence; then a `---` line before any note to the user;

every revision reprints the whole block.

## Check before printing

- Every path, id and command in the prompt exists or works — verified by a read-only lookup, not

remembered.

- Every fact stated as settled was verified in this session or stated by the user; an inference

is marked as one ("probably", "unverified") or cut.

- A session holding only this text can act without asking what was meant.

Done when all four hold.

## Boundaries

- The printed prompt is the product: write no file unless asked.