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fidelity-ai-workspace/agent-memory/workflows/prompt-engineering-lessons.md
david.delagneau 1ad707373a Add daily logs and templates for project fidelity
- Created daily log entries for May 13, 14, 18, 19, 20, and 21, capturing work done, findings, and next steps.
- Established a daily logs index for easy navigation of daily notes.
- Developed templates for daily logs, decisions, meeting notes, people, systems, and work items to standardize documentation.
- Introduced base files for filtering and displaying various types of project knowledge, including daily notes, decisions, people, systems, work items, and workstreams.
- Added maps for current work, fidelity apps, and fidelity domain to enhance project navigation and context.
2026-05-21 12:28:07 -06:00

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type, status, updated, tags
type status updated tags
agent-workflow active 2026-04-21
prompting
quality
standup
workflow

Prompt Engineering Lessons

Goal

Capture reusable prompting lessons so the agent does not need to re-research the same quality patterns for future prompt and command improvements.


Stable Lessons

  • Start with the smallest prompt that solves the measured failure mode, then add constraints only where they fix a real recurring error.
  • Prefer explicit output contracts over vague quality goals.
  • Define completion criteria clearly so the model knows what "done" looks like.
  • Separate sections by purpose: source selection, decision rules, output rules, and anti-patterns.
  • Put high-priority behavioral instructions in the command or prompt that directly controls the output, not in project-facing notes.
  • Use concrete anti-patterns when a recurring failure mode is known; models respond better to explicit "do not do X" guidance than to general advice alone.
  • Prefer source-bound selection rules when stale or overly broad context can pollute the answer.
  • If a task depends on chronology, state chronology explicitly as an output rule.
  • If a task depends on dates, inject an explicit temporal context block near the top of the command: current timestamp, today, calendar yesterday, and the default previous workday. Do not rely on the model to infer this from session history.
  • Delegate date arithmetic to code or shell commands and feed the result back to the model as data.
  • If concision matters, define how to compress: what should be merged, what should remain split, and what should be omitted.
  • If the output is meant to be sent directly, make "copy/paste ready" part of the contract.
  • Avoid mixing task logic with human-facing project documentation; reusable prompting logic belongs in prompts, commands, skills, or agent memory.

Standup-Specific Lessons

  • The model should not infer "worked yesterday" from durable status alone.
  • The standup command should anchor today, yesterday, and previous workday with absolute dates before reading logs or Mattermost evidence.
  • Yesterday should be tied to previous-workday evidence first, then disambiguated with current memory.
  • Only active work items should be expanded by default; avoid loading every ticket note when generating short status output.
  • Future-sprint work should be excluded from Today unless it is a real blocker or the user explicitly wants forward-looking planning.
  • Chronological ordering inside a Jira item reduces awkward or misleading summaries.
  • Closely related events should usually be compressed into one concise sub-bullet when they belong to the same continuous investigation.

Quality Loop

  • Treat prompt improvement as eval-driven iteration: identify the exact bad output pattern, add the smallest correction, and check whether it fixes the failure without bloating the prompt.
  • When a correction is about workspace behavior, update the controlling prompt or command immediately so the next run benefits.
  • Keep project memory clean while improving prompt quality; do not store agent heuristics in workspaces/fidelity/project-knowledge/.