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[refactoring] Extract shared component: smoke-test 'keep output short' prompt block #52421

Description

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Skill: Smoke-test brevity/efficiency prompt block

Description: 21 workflows (mostly smoke-*.md engine-conformance tests) each embed a near-identical prompt paragraph instructing the agent to keep outputs extremely short and concise ("IMPORTANT: Keep all outputs extremely short and concise. Use single-line responses where possible. No verbose explanations."), sometimes expanded into a longer "CRITICAL EFFICIENCY REQUIREMENTS" bullet list.

Current usage

  • 21 workflows match this pattern verbatim or near-verbatim, including: smoke-copilot.md, smoke-claude.md, smoke-codex.md, smoke-crush.md, smoke-cursor.md, smoke-gemini.md, smoke-goose.md, smoke-kiro.md, smoke-opencode.md, smoke-pi.md, smoke-pydantic.md, smoke-aider.md, and several smoke-copilot-* variants (aoai-apikey, aoai-entra, arm, auto, mai, sdk, small), plus smoke-create-cross-repo-pr.md / smoke-update-cross-repo-pr.md.
  • None of these currently import a shared file for this guidance; each hardcodes the sentence/paragraph in its prompt body.
  • A related but distinct shared file, shared/keep-it-short.md, already exists but is not used by these smoke workflows and has slightly different wording/purpose (general conciseness + emoji skill), so it isn't a drop-in replacement without adjustment.

Proposed shared component

shared/smoke-test-brevity.md — a focused prompt fragment (not full frontmatter) with the standard "keep outputs extremely short" instruction plus the bullet-list efficiency requirements, sized specifically for smoke/conformance tests where token cost per run matters (they run frequently in CI).

Estimated impact

  • 21 workflows affected
  • ~3-8 lines saved per workflow => roughly 100+ lines saved, plus consistent wording that's easy to update in one place
  • Maintenance benefit: smoke tests are numerous and low-risk to update centrally; a wording tweak (e.g., adding a new efficiency rule) currently requires touching 21 files

Migration plan

  1. Create shared/smoke-test-brevity.md capturing the common short-output instruction, reconciling minor wording differences into one canonical version.
  2. Update the 21 identified smoke-*.md workflows to imports: [shared/smoke-test-brevity.md] and remove the inline duplicate paragraph.
  3. Run make recompile and diff a sample of .lock.yml files to confirm no semantic change to compiled prompts.
  4. Consider consolidating with shared/keep-it-short.md in a follow-up if wording converges.

Example usage

imports:
  - shared/smoke-test-brevity.md

Priority: High (21 workflows, low extraction complexity — plain prompt text, no frontmatter merge concerns).

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  • expires on Aug 14, 2026, 8:26 PM UTC-08:00

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