Evaluate an early ambiguity preflight for autonomous prompt execution

Open
#267 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Quiet
Domain
ai

Research direction

Start by reading bootstrap.md and the instruction-fidelity guardrail introduced by PR #266, then trace the beginning of prompt execution alongside its template phases and approval gates. Define how the proposed preflight handles material ambiguity, permitted interaction, and autonomous sessions, with a documented design that preserves alternatives without blocking on minor uncertainty.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Problem

The instruction-fidelity guardrail handles material ambiguity when it is encountered, and bootstrap.md proactively scans substantive parameter values during collection. In autonomous sessions, however, an ambiguity that materially affects downstream decisions may only be noticed after execution has started, when user input is unavailable.

Proposed direction

Evaluate adding an explicit ambiguity preflight near the beginning of prompt execution. The preflight should:

  • identify material ambiguities that could affect later decisions;
  • ask targeted questions when interaction is permitted;
  • when interaction is unavailable, preserve viable alternatives as [OPEN QUESTION] rather than silently choosing one;
  • avoid blocking on minor or non-material uncertainty;
  • compose cleanly with existing template phases and approval gates.

Context

Follow-up from PR #266 review feedback by @abeltrano. This is intentionally separate from the universal instruction-fidelity guardrail introduced by that PR so the timing and autonomous-execution semantics can be designed without expanding the current change.

Dominant language
JavaScript
Stars
105
Forks
23
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from microsoft/PromptKit

All issues in microsoft/PromptKit

Similar issues

More JavaScript issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.