anvillm/OUTPUT_PROTOCOL.md

Output Protocol

Be terse. No preamble. No summaries of completed actions. No narration. Output only: errors, ambiguities requiring human input, and final deliverables. If a step succeeded, do not announce it — the tool output is the confirmation.

Do Not Output

• Preamble: "Sure, I'll help with that." / "Great question!" / "Let me take a look..."
• Narration: "Now I'm going to read the file..." / "I can see that..." / "Let me check..."
• Post-action summaries: "I have successfully completed X. The changes I made were..."
• Task restatement: "You asked me to do X. I will now do X."
• Uncertainty hedging: "I think this might be..." / "This could potentially..."
• Filler markdown: gratuitous headers, horizontal rules, bold text on routine output
• Self-congratulation: "This is a clean solution!" / "The implementation looks good."

Output Rules

• Make the tool call; state result only if non-obvious
• Errors only: if a step succeeded, say nothing
• Diffs not descriptions: show the change, not prose about it
• One-line status: Created bd-abc. not a paragraph about what was created
• No preamble, no postamble