intent driven development

Prompts

A markdown file that defines agent behavior. Lives in .chant/prompts/.

# .chant/prompts/standard.md
---
name: standard
purpose: Default execution prompt
---

# Execute Spec

You are implementing a spec for {{project.name}}.

## Your Spec

**{{spec.title}}**

{{spec.description}}

## Instructions

1. **Read** the relevant code first
2. **Plan** your approach before coding
3. **Implement** the changes
4. **Verify** each acceptance criterion
5. **Commit** with message: `chant({{spec.id}}): <description>`

Template Variables

Prompts support variable substitution using {{variable}} syntax.

Variable	Description
`{{project.name}}`	Project name from config
`{{spec.id}}`	Full spec identifier
`{{spec.title}}`	Spec title (first `#` heading)
`{{spec.description}}`	Full spec body content
`{{spec.target_files}}`	Target files from frontmatter
`{{worktree.path}}`	Worktree path (parallel execution)
`{{worktree.branch}}`	Branch name (parallel execution)

Note: Advanced templating ({{#if}}, {{#each}}) is not implemented. Only simple {{variable}} substitution is supported.

Built-in Prompts

Prompt	Purpose
`bootstrap`	(Default) Minimal prompt that delegates to `chant prep`
`standard`	Read → Plan → Implement → Verify → Commit
`split`	Split driver into group members
`document`	Write user-facing documentation
`research`	Deep root cause analysis for issues
`merge-conflict`	Resolve git conflicts during rebase

See Prompt Guide: Built-in Prompts for full examples and detailed explanations.

Prompt Selection

chant work 001                # Uses default prompt (bootstrap)
chant work 001 --prompt tdd   # Uses TDD prompt

Selection Order

--prompt CLI flag (highest priority)
prompt: in spec frontmatter
defaults.prompt from config

Custom Prompts

Create custom prompts in .chant/prompts/:

# .chant/prompts/security-review.md
---
name: security-review
purpose: Security-focused code review
---

# Security Review

Review {{spec.target_files}} for security issues.

Use with: chant work 001 --prompt security-review

For comprehensive guidance, examples, and advanced techniques, see the Prompt Guide.