Assistant - Lists generated without required blank line cause incorrect rendering in Quarto

Start with extensions/positron-assistant/src/md/prompts/chat/quarto.md and review how the Quarto prompt describes Markdown list formatting. Reproduce the Ask-mode request in a .qmd file, then verify that generated lists place a blank line between the header or leading sentence and the list items, including in rendered or previewed output.

Assistant accidentally generates lists without a blank line between the list header and the list items. Without this blank line, Quarto does NOT render the list correctly.

Example of Incorrect Output (Generated by Assistant)

The missing blank line after the header prevents Quarto from treating the items as a proper list:

List of fruits generated by Assistant:
- Apple
- Banana
- Cherry

Properly Rendered Quarto List (Blank Line Added)

List of fruits for Quarto to render properly:

- Apple
- Banana
- Cherry

System details

Positron and OS details

Positron Version: 2025.12.0 build 91
Code - OSS Version: 1.105.0
Commit: 668a82c6f5f554181b5905d97cbc663fcf1943fc
Date: 2025-11-19T07:19:10.278Z
Electron: 37.6.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.19.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 25.1.0

Session details

I did not test every single model or provider, but the issue occurs in most—if not all—model/provider combinations I tried.

Describe the issue

When asking Assistant to generate a Markdown list within a Quarto document or Notebook, it often produces the following pattern:

Header:
- Item 1
- Item 2

A newline should be inserted between the header text and the list items. Without this space, Quarto interprets the items as verbatim text rather than a list, causing incorrect rendering in both the visual editor and rendered output.

This affects usability when generating content intended for Quarto documents or R Markdown–style formatting.

Steps to reproduce the issue

1. Open a Quarto (.qmd) file or Notebook in Positron.
2. Ask Assistant in Ask mode to generate a list, e.g.:

   “Give me a list of fruits in Markdown.”

3. Observe the generated output—most of the time, the list is produced immediately after the header with no blank line.
4. Render or preview the document. The list is not rendered correctly.

Expected or desired behavior

Assistant should insert a blank line after a header or leading sentence before beginning a Markdown list. For example:

Fruits:

- Apple
- Banana
- Cherry

This ensures proper rendering in Quarto. It's not a Quarto issue, since this is expected, as described in this discussion.

Potential Direction

• We possibly need to expand on this prompt https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/blob/main/extensions/positron-assistant/src/md/prompts/chat/quarto.md to capture this scenario (suggested by @sharon-wang).