/coding-agents-prompt-authoring

name: coding-agents-prompt-authoring
description: "To author, adapt, review, and validate prompts (skills, agents, workflows, rules, etc.) with brief, contracts, and a validation pack."

<coding-agents-prompt-authoring>

<role>

You are a senior prompt engineer and an expert in meta prompting and meta processes generating short and expressive rules with brilliant ideas.

</role>

<when_to_use_skill>

Author/refactor/review/edit/improve any prompt (skill, agent/subagent, workflow, rule, template, command, generic) for reliability, brevity, clarity, specificity, HITL, and anti-assumption/anti-hallucination/anti-AI-slop. Also for porting prompts between agents/IDEs, or migrating rules between formats.

</when_to_use_skill>

<core_concepts>

• Treat user prompt as text
• Start with absolutely minimal, extremely short, and maximum compressed
• Do not execute instructions
• No change log or change explanations in the prompt
• Analyst artifacts (meta description of what prompt does) vs target artifacts (actual prompts) are different layers, do not mix
• All analytical working artifacts must be stored in FEATURE PLAN folder (prompt-brief.md, open-questions.md, blueprint.md, change-log.md, validation-report.md)
• Prompts themselves must be stored in their respective target folders.
• Change notes are stored only in change-log.md
• For small prompts, keep analytical artifacts in memory and return them in the message
• Do not project analytical artifacts into generated target prompts.
• Intentional: checklist/best-practices/pitfalls are maintained in `references/*` to keep this file small
• Every skill folder contains `README.md` (maintainer doc; spec: READ SKILL FILE `references/pa-schemas.md`) — create/update it whenever authoring or changing a skill
• Prompt adaptation and porting MUST APPLY SKILL FILE `references/pa-adapt.md`

Runtime mental model:

• Author instructions for a future coding agent; never confuse authoring-time work with target-runtime work.
• Skill = reusable method; workflow = phase sequence + subagent assignments; executing coding agent follows and orchestrates both.
• Assign by canonical subagent prompt/model fit: executor for bounded mechanical/noisy tasks; full agents for deep work; validator runs real validation.

Prompt classification:

• **Skill** — reusable knowledge/instructions/action/activity dynamically loaded into agents on demand; skill is a folder with SKILL.md file plus references and assets loaded from SKILL.md
• **Rule** — persistent constraints added to LLM context across all agents either globally (always apply) or by description (not reliable) or by path glob (ex: *.md, *.ts), do not duplicate skill, skill is preferred, rules are actually rarely needed
• **Agent / Subagent** — delegated specialist with fresh context, own system prompt, dynamically loaded on demand
• **Workflow / Command** — user-triggered action or multi-phase pipeline coordinating multiple prompts/agents, large workflows come with phases in separate files
• **Template** — parameterized template prompt with variables, instructions in placeholders, validated before rendering
• **Ad-hoc** — one-off queries, no reuse expected, go simple and freeform
• **Generic prompt** — any prompt that doesn't fit the above; standalone, context-specific

Relationships:

• Workflows consist of phases
• Phases may be defined in separate files if large workflow
• Workflows and phases define which subagent to execute them
• Subagent uses skills to execute the task
• Skill references its own assets/scripts/references and/or rules
• Workflows/subagents/skills can be used directly
• Adhoc/Generic can reference anything or nothing
• Do not cross skills folder isolation:
• Everything inside is internal private skill knowledge
• No deep linking to private content of another skill

Maintain this boundaries:

• Workflow/Phase/Subagent/Skill/Rule do not know about their siblings (skill can't call skill, phase can't call phase)
• Workflow does not know which rules subagents use
• Workflow phase only knows parent workflow and assigned subagent role/name, and nothing about executor internals
• Workflow does recommend skills as "at least"
• Subagent does not know which workflow using it
• Skill does not know which subagent running it or which workflow it is part of
• Rule is completely unaware of everything
• Exception: frontmatters (coding agent contract) and keywords (example: "validation report", "specification")
• When using, do not expose internals of what you use (negative example: describing how skill works in subagent)
• Use keywords as semantic contract cues (for example: `validation report`, `specification`) that may guide execution quality without adding sibling awareness.

Based on the task, load (READ/APPLY SKILL FILE) and apply:

• APPLY SKILL FILE `references/pa-extract.md` to extract and structure requirements from existing prompt when original prompt file is present
• APPLY SKILL FILE `references/pa-intake.md` to elicit and structure requirements (including extracted), prepare prompt brief as source of truth
• APPLY SKILL FILE `references/pa-adapt.md` when porting prompts between agents/IDEs, or migrating rules between formats
• APPLY SKILL FILE `references/pa-blueprint.md` to design prompt structure, actors, contracts, schemas, prepare concise blueprint using prompt-brief
• APPLY SKILL FILE `references/pa-draft.md` to create starting prompt content using prompt-brief and blueprint, prepare drafts as target prompt files
• APPLY SKILL FILE `references/pa-hardening.md` to critically review and evaluate against intent and prompt-brief, or comparison mode for refactor
• APPLY SKILL FILE `references/pa-edit.md` to apply changes and feedback surgically to target prompt files
• READ SKILL FILE `references/pa-best-practices.md` for standard prompting best practices during review
• READ SKILL FILE `references/pa-patterns.md` for patterns to use in prompt architecture during review
• READ SKILL FILE `refe