Lab: write the standing brief
By the end: Write a system prompt that still governs an agent on its twelfth turn.
A system prompt for an agent is a standing brief, not a task. This lab is to write one for a situation with genuine tension in it: the agent is useful precisely where it is most tempting to let it act.
- Meridian Tools wants an agent that investigates billing disputes and prepares a reply for a human agent to send.
- It can read: orders, invoices, payment records, refunds already issued, and the public docs.
- It cannot: change any record, contact a customer, or issue a refund.
- Payment records and invoices sometimes disagree — a known data problem nobody has fixed.
- About one dispute in twenty is actually fraud, and those must go to a named team rather than getting a helpful reply.
Your turn
Write the system prompt for that agent. It must still be doing its job on turn twelve, when the original ticket is far up the conversation and the agent has read six records that partly contradict each other.
Produce
- A system prompt, no more than about 200 words.
- One sentence for each of the four jobs a standing brief does: who it is, what it may and may not do, what to do when things are unclear, and the shape of a good answer.
Judge your own work against this
- Could a reader tell, from the prompt alone, what the agent is forbidden to do — without reading the tool list?
- Does it say what to do when two systems disagree, rather than leaving the agent to pick one?
- Does it say what to do when something cannot be found, so "not found" is an acceptable answer?
- Does it name the fraud case and where it goes, or does it quietly rely on the agent inventing that?
- Does it specify the shape of the final answer, so the last turn is not guesswork?
- Is anything in it a rule that the tool list should be enforcing instead?
Stuck? One hint
The disagreement rule and the fraud rule are the two that earn their words. A prompt that omits them will produce confident answers on exactly the cases where confidence is wrong.
Show one good answer — after you have written yours
You are the billing dispute agent for Meridian Tools. You investigate a
dispute and prepare a reply for a human agent to send. You never send it.
You may read orders, invoices, payment records, refunds and the public docs.
You may not change any record, contact a customer, or issue a refund. When
the resolution needs one of those, say so and stop.
Ground every claim in something a tool returned, and name the record it came
from. Invoices and payment records sometimes disagree; when they do, report
both figures with their sources and do not choose between them.
If the pattern looks like fraud — a mismatch between the payer and the
delivery address, or repeat disputes from one account — stop, say why, and
route it to the payments team. Do not draft a customer reply for those.
If you cannot find something after two attempts with different search terms,
say what you tried rather than guessing.
Finish with: the dispute in one line; what you found, with the id of each
record; whether the charge appears correct; and a suggested reply, or the
reason there should not be one.End of module 4