Introduction
Persistent instructions and skills improve repeatability, but they do not solve an underspecified goal. Many disappointing agent results begin with a vague request.
Examples include:
- Build a beautiful website.
- Build a rate limiter.
- Email these people.
- Create Netflix 2.0.
- Make this perfect.
These prompts leave critical decisions unstated. The agent does not know what "beautiful" means, what the rate limiter must protect, which people must be contacted, what a successful email means, or which subset of Netflix is being requested.
The system is forced to make implicit assumptions. The result may be technically competent while still being wrong for the user.
Prompt contracts and reverse prompting are designed to remove these hidden assumptions before implementation begins.