octocode-prompt-optimizer

name	octocode-prompt-optimizer
description	Use when an agent prompt, skill, tool schema, policy, or handoff needs to get clearer, safer, easier to trigger, cheaper in context, or measurable against real behavior.

Octocode Prompt Optimizer

Optimize instruction behavior, not prose aesthetics. Flow: READ → UNDERSTAND → RATE → FIX → VALIDATE → OUTPUT.

Lobby rules and gates

• READ: inspect the whole input and its type; UNDERSTAND: map goal, parts, flow, assumptions, and unknowns.
• RATE: record evidenced issues, severity, and baseline; FIX: address Critical/High issues and name deliberate deferrals.
• VALIDATE: prove intent and required behavior remain correct; OUTPUT: provide the requested artifact and truthful delta.
• Use the full path for multi-section, ambiguous, tool-facing, or high-risk work; combine adjacent steps only for short, low-risk text. Never skip validation.
• Preserve intent, working branches, identifiers, commands, and required metadata; ask before changing them.
• Verify cited commands, flags, paths, tool names, and schemas before rewriting; flag unverified claims.
• Make only critical behavior mandatory; retain preference language for real preferences. Mutate files only with authority.

Smart routes — load only what the current step needs

• During the core path, load only the active gate: references/gates.md, references/rate.md, references/fix.md, references/validate.md, or references/output.md — prevent later-step advice from biasing the current decision.
• When reducing noise, load references/conciseness-toolkit.md; when fixing priority/hierarchy load references/attention.md; when choosing reusable structures load references/patterns.md or references/prompt-techniques.md — match technique to failure mechanism.
• When optimizing tool or MCP contracts, load references/tool-contracts.md; for agent handoffs load references/agent-communication.md; for typed packet boundaries load references/zod-agent-contracts.md — make inputs, outputs, authority, and failure states explicit.
• When context can overflow, load references/context-budget.md; when repeated calls share stable prefixes load references/prompt-caching.md — control relevance, pagination, latency, and cost.
• When reliability must be measured, load references/evaluation-data.md — build realistic held-out scenarios, verifiers, metrics, and a failure ledger.
• When instructions consume retrieved or user-supplied content, load references/untrusted-content.md — preserve the boundary between data and authority.
• When improving this skill, prefer octocode-eval; otherwise load references/improve-loop.md — require measurable acceptance instead of intuition.

Related routes

• Use octocode-skills for skill-folder architecture/review; octocode-research to verify cited contracts; octocode-eval for held-out behavior.
• Use octocode-subagent for delegation topology; octocode-awareness for coordinated instruction-file edits.