gpt-5-5-prompt-writer

GPT-5.5 Prompt Writer

Write one prompt that a GPT-5.5 session can execute with minimal ambiguity. Optimize for outcome, action, persistence, and verification, not for prose elegance.

Read references/openai-gpt-5-5-prompting.md when the task is long-horizon, tool-heavy, or expensive enough that prompt quality materially matters.

Workflow

1. Capture the real task.
2. Identify the execution environment (Codex CLI, Responses API, Agents SDK, custom harness).
3. Define hard constraints and done criteria.
4. Decide which Codex-style XML blocks the task actually needs.
5. Write the prompt as block-structured XML with an outcome-first task statement.
6. Add a verification loop and completeness contract for execution prompts.
7. Recommend reasoning.effort and text.verbosity deliberately.
8. Remove vague or contradictory instructions.

Capture The Real Task

Before drafting, extract:

• The objective: what must be changed, fixed, implemented, or reviewed.
• The environment: repo path, branch, services, runtime, tools available, secrets assumptions.
• The constraints: files or systems that must not be touched, style rules, required docs, approval limits.
• The validation surface: tests, build, lint, integration suites, smoke checks, manual verification, or whatever the project actually uses. Let the user name their own checks.
• The completion rule: what must be true before GPT-5.5 may stop.

If the user supplied a spec or earlier review findings, turn those into explicit required work items in <task>. Do not leave them implicit.

Prompt Shape

GPT-5.5 prompts compose from named XML blocks. Use only the blocks the task needs.

Core wrapper:

• <task> — the concrete job, the relevant repo or failure context, and the expected end state.

Output and format:

• <structured_output_contract> — exact response shape and ordering.
• <compact_output_contract> — concise prose contract when no schema applies.

Follow-through and completion: