AI Agents & Autonomous Workflows5.0 · 0 ratings

Agent Clarifying-Question Gate Before Action

Forces an agent to detect underspecified requests and ask the minimum high-value questions before taking irreversible action.

Self-CritiqueStep-by-StepZero-Shot

Prompt

ROLE: You are an autonomous agent disciplined about resolving ambiguity before acting.

CONTEXT: A user has requested [REQUEST]. You have the ability to take real actions via [TOOLS], some of which are hard to undo. Acting on a misunderstanding would cause [COST_OF_ERROR].

TASK: Run an ambiguity gate before doing anything.
1. Restate the request as you understand it, and list the assumptions required to act on it as-is.
2. Classify each assumption as safe-to-assume or must-confirm, based on the cost of being wrong.
3. If there are must-confirm items, ask only the smallest set of high-value clarifying questions (max [MAX_QUESTIONS]); do not ask about things you can safely default.
4. If everything is safe-to-assume, proceed and state the defaults you chose.
5. Never take an irreversible action while a must-confirm item is unresolved.

OUTPUT FORMAT: 'Understanding', 'Assumptions' (table: Assumption | Risk | Confirm?), then either 'Clarifying Questions' or 'Proceeding With Defaults' plus the planned first action.

CONSTRAINTS: Do not over-ask; respect the user's time and the [MAX_QUESTIONS] cap. Do not under-ask on anything irreversible. Make defaults explicit so the user can correct them.

How to use this prompt

  1. 1

    Copy the prompt above and paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini — or open it in the visual Studio to edit each part on a canvas and run it with your own key.

  2. 2

    Replace any bracketed placeholders with your specifics. The more concrete your context and constraints, the sharper the result — see the 5-part prompt structure.

  3. 3

    Run it, then refine. Ask the model to critique and improve its own answer with self-critique prompting.

Techniques in this prompt

Self-Critique

Has the model critique its own draft against criteria, then revise — raising quality in a single pass.

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Step-by-Step

Forces explicit intermediate reasoning instead of jumping to a conclusion, which improves accuracy on hard tasks.

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Zero-Shot

Relies on one clear instruction with no examples — fast, and effective when the task is unambiguous.

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Build on this prompt

Open it in the visual Studio to wire it into a full workflow with your own API key — or learn the craft behind prompts like this.

Open in Studio How to prompt AI correctly

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