Engineering defaults

Source: ./src/engineering-defaults/

Every agent boot appends a block of best-practice guidance to the system prompt. The content is a set of short markdown files — one per topic — that ship with GuildHall and can be shadowed per-project.

Topics

type EngineeringDefaultTopic =
  | 'coding'
  | 'testing'
  | 'frontend'
  | 'git'
  | 'security'
  | 'dependencies'
  | 'architecture'
  | 'documentation'
  | 'review'

Each topic is a standalone .md file under ./src/engineering-defaults/.

Public API

import {
  loadEngineeringDefaults,
  composeSystemPromptWithDefaults,
} from 'guildhall/engineering-defaults'

const defaults = await loadEngineeringDefaults(workspace)
const fullPrompt = composeSystemPromptWithDefaults(baseSystemPrompt, defaults)

The composer keeps the base prompt first and appends a ## Engineering defaults section with each topic under its own subheading.

Overriding per project

Drop a file at ./memory/engineering-defaults/<topic>.md to shadow the built-in version. Example — to tighten testing.md for your project, write a new one at ./memory/engineering-defaults/testing.md and it'll replace the bundled file.

Why this is separate from skills

Skills are opt-in (agents load them when they want them). Engineering defaults are always-on. A skill teaches how to do a specific procedure; defaults set the baseline the agent carries into every procedure.