Resource
Brain Dump Prompt Formatter
Converts a stream-of-consciousness prompt into a structured one with Task, Context, Constraints, Requirements, and Output Format sections.
Agent Instruction Prompt Formatter
Formats fuzzy agent instructions into a structured prompt with objective, available tools, constraints, success criteria, and failure handling.
Overview
Agent instructions written informally produce agents that either do too much, get stuck on ambiguous cases, or fail silently when something goes wrong. Structural gaps — no explicit constraints, no success criteria, no failure handling — turn into unpredictable behaviour at runtime. This formatter adds that structure from whatever you have written, without changing what you want the agent to actually do.
How to use this resource
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Write out what the agent should do
Include the task, what tools it has access to, and any explicit restrictions you already know about.
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Open in Prompt Formatter
The formatter adds objective, tools, constraints, success criteria, and failure handling structure.
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Review gaps in Objective and Constraints
Check the Objective and Constraints sections for gaps — vague scope and missing constraint boundaries are the most common causes of unpredictable agent behaviour. Tighten them before running.
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Add missing failure and approval rules
If the Failure Handling and Human Approval Rules sections are empty, your input had no matching instructions. Add explicit rules for both — missing failure conditions and unclear approval gates are the leading causes of agents that run too far or stop silently.
Why This Works
- An explicit constraints section is the primary mechanism for preventing over-broad agent behaviour — implicit constraints don't hold at runtime
- Testable success criteria let the agent self-evaluate before completion, which reduces results that technically finished but missed the actual goal
- A default failure handling rule ('report what was attempted and what blocked it') prevents silent failure, which is harder to debug than a stated error
Best for
- Agent instructions that grew informally and now have structural gaps
- Tasks where the agent has been doing too much or not enough because the scope was unclear
- Agent prompts that don't handle failure cases and produce silent incomplete results
Not for
- Multi-agent pipelines where each agent has different instructions — format them separately
- Agent architectures where the tool list and constraints are determined programmatically at runtime
Use cases
- Formatting informal instructions you wrote for an agent pipeline into a structured task prompt
- Cleaning up agent instructions that have been producing over-broad or unpredictable behaviour
- Preparing agent instructions before deploying to a workflow automation tool
- Turning a natural language description of what an agent should do into a structured runnable prompt
FAQ
Will this formatter change what I told the agent to do, or only restructure it?
Restructure only — the rules say "Preserve the exact scope of the original objective — do not expand or narrow it," plus don't invent tools and don't add constraints not in the original. It slots your text into Role, Objective, Available Tools, Constraints, Success Criteria, and Failure Handling. Ambiguous objectives get flagged "[AMBIGUOUS: clarify]" rather than resolved. It reshapes the instructions; you still run the agent.
How does this fill in failure handling when my instructions never mentioned it?
It inserts one default rule: "If the task cannot be completed, report what was attempted and what blocked completion" — the only content it adds. Unspecified tools become "[not specified — clarify before running]" instead of invented ones. The whyThisWorks notes silent failure is harder to debug than a stated error. It's a formatting pass; runtime behavior is still on your assistant.
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Prompt Cleanup Examples (Before & After)
A set of before-and-after examples showing exactly what prompt cleanup removes — and what it deliberately leaves alone.
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Tool
Prompt Formatter
Turn a messy, stream-of-consciousness prompt into a clean, structured one.