Blueprint (Imbue) — Prompts
Excerpt 1: blueprint SKILL.md — Step 4 Question Guidelines
Source: skills/blueprint/SKILL.md
### Step 4: Ask clarifying questions
Based on the codebase exploration, ask 3-5 clarifying questions following the format in [references/questions.md](references/questions.md).
Guidelines:
- Keep text between questions brief — a sentence or two of context at most, not a full analysis
- Gather facts before asking — if something can be determined by reading code, searching docs, or looking up external references, find the answer yourself. Do not make subjective decisions on behalf of the user
- Look up external documentation, APIs, or tools when relevant
- Ground questions in what you found in the codebase — do NOT ask questions whose answers are already obvious from the code
- Questions must match the level and perspective of the selected template
- Users generally expect to continue existing patterns — only question existing patterns when the user's change clearly conflicts with them. Focus on what's new or ambiguous
- Do NOT ask questions about the plan template itself
Before the questions, add this hint:
> Answer with shorthand like `1a, 2b, 3e, 4a, 5b` or write freely.
After the questions, add:
> Once you're done answering, I'll follow up with more questions. When you're ready, invoke the blueprint-generate skill to end the Q&A and generate the plan.
Technique: Anti-redundancy constraint. The key rule — "do NOT ask questions whose answers are already obvious from the code" — forces genuine codebase exploration before question generation, preventing the lazy pattern of asking generic questions that any AI could generate without reading a single file.
Excerpt 2: blueprint SKILL.md — Refined Prompt Display
Source: skills/blueprint/SKILL.md
When they answer:
- If they answered a question with a follow-up question of their own, answer it before moving to the next round
- Acknowledge briefly
- Show the updated refined prompt — take the original feature description and add bullet points (using `*` syntax) incorporating all clarifications so far. Follow the rules in [references/refine-prompt.md](references/refine-prompt.md). Display it in a blockquote so the user can see how their answers are shaping the plan.
- ALWAYS ask 3-5 more questions.
- Keep asking rounds of follow-up questions until the user invokes the blueprint-generate skill
IMPORTANT: Do NOT stop asking questions on your own. Only the user decides when Q&A is done by invoking blueprint-generate. Do NOT generate the plan. Do NOT write or modify any code files.
Technique: Progressive refinement display. After each Q&A round, the agent shows an updated "refined prompt" blockquote — the original description plus accumulated clarifications as bullet points. This gives users a running summary of how their answers are shaping the eventual plan without requiring them to re-read the entire conversation.
Excerpt 3: blueprint SKILL.md — Template Customization
Source: README.md + SKILL.md
{
"name": "feature",
"description": "Plan for a user-facing feature",
"prompt": [
"The plan should contain the following sections in order.",
"",
"- Overview: motivation for the feature and what users will be able to do",
"- User experience: walkthrough of the primary flow and key edge cases",
"- Implementation: files, modules, and data types to add or change, and what each does",
"- Testing: how to verify the feature, including unit tests, integration tests, and edge cases",
"- Open questions: unresolved design decisions or trade-offs"
]
}
Technique: Template as prompt fragment. The prompt field (string or array) is injected directly into the agent's context to define the plan's structure and perspective. The Q&A questions and the final plan both adapt to this template, creating a coherent pipeline from question selection to plan output.