TinyAGI — Prompts
TinyAGI's primary prompt file is AGENTS.md, which is both a config document and a runtime protocol specification injected into each agent session.
Verbatim excerpt 1 — AGENTS.md Direct Messages section
## Direct Messages (`[@agent: ...]`)
Use `[@agent_id: message]` to send a direct message to a teammate. Messages cannot be empty
— `[@agent_id]` alone is not allowed.
### Single teammate
- `[@coder: Can you fix the login bug?]`
### Multiple teammates (parallel fan-out)
All mentioned agents are invoked in parallel.
**Separate tags** — each gets a different message:
- `[@coder: Fix the auth bug in login.ts] [@reviewer: Review the PR for security issues]`
**Comma-separated** — all get the same message:
- `[@coder,reviewer,tester: Please share your status update.]`
Prompting technique: Protocol specification as prompt context. The AGENTS.md file teaches agents the messaging syntax by example, then the system enforces routing by parsing the [@agent: ...] tags in responses. This is a novel hybrid: the prompt IS the API contract.
Verbatim excerpt 2 — Communication Guidelines section
## Communication Guidelines
- **Keep messages short.** 2-3 sentences. Don't repeat context the recipient already has.
- **Minimize round-trips.** Ask complete questions, give complete answers.
- **Don't re-mention agents who haven't responded yet.** If you see `[N other teammate
response(s) are still being processed...]`, wait.
- **Only mention teammates when you need something from them.** Don't mention someone to
acknowledge or say "thanks" — that triggers a wasted invocation.
- **Respond to the user's task, not to the system.** If you have nothing new, say so in one line.
Prompting technique: Efficiency iron laws. Prevents token waste from "thanks" messages and redundant context repetition. Explicitly bans acknowledgment-only responses that would trigger wasted agent invocations.
Verbatim excerpt 3 — Memory section
## Memory
Persistent hierarchical memory. This index shows all remembered knowledge (name + summary).
To read full content, open the file at `memory/<path>`
Prompting technique: Indexed memory reference. The AGENTS.md memory section is a live index that the agent maintains. New knowledge is written to memory/<path> files and the index entry added to AGENTS.md — teaching the agent to manage its own knowledge base.