feat: add results-driven mission principle to build.txt

[marcusquinn]

Summary

• Adds "Results-driven" bullet to the Mission section: establish success criteria before starting each task, work until verified not merely attempted
• Adds completion summary instruction to Model-Specific Reinforcements: after work, summarise what was solved (with evidence), what needs user verification, and open questions

Counters the LLM tendency to declare success prematurely by requiring upfront success definition and evidence-based completion reporting.

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Chores
  • Updated internal guidelines to emphasize results-driven validation with clearly defined success criteria before work begins. Enhanced post-completion practices to include comprehensive work summaries with supporting evidence and identification of items requiring verification or further clarification.

[gemini-code-assist]

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[coderabbitai]

Walkthrough

This change adds mission-aligned directives to the Build agent prompts: a "Results-driven" principle requiring upfront success criteria definition and work continuation until proven functional, plus a post-work summary practice documenting solutions with evidence and unresolved items.

Changes

Cohort / File(s)	Summary
Agent Prompt Directives .agents/prompts/build.txt	Added "Results-driven" principle enforcing upfront success criteria and proven delivery, plus post-work summary practice documenting solutions, verification items, and open questions.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 1 (Trivial) | ⏱️ ~3 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• feat: add mission statement with ROI and self-improvement directives #652: Modifies the same .agents/prompts/build.txt file to add broader mission and operational directives alongside this PR's behavioral principles.
• feat: inherit OpenCode prompts for Build+ and Plan+ agents #7: Affects Build+ agent prompt configuration through prompt inheritance and injection mechanisms, related to how these new directives are applied.

Poem

🚀 Results-driven, clear and bright,
Success criteria set just right,
Prove it works before you're done,
Then summarize what you have won!

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 3

✅ Passed checks (3 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title accurately and specifically describes the main change: adding a results-driven mission principle to build.txt, which aligns with the PR's primary objective.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.

_{✏️ Tip: You can configure your own custom pre-merge checks in the settings.}

✨ Finishing touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Post copyable unit tests in a comment
• Commit unit tests in branch chore/results-driven-mission

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No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

🧹 Recent nitpick comments

.agents/prompts/build.txt (2)

12-12: Strong addition to enforce verification-driven work.

This principle directly addresses premature completion declarations and aligns well with the full-loop development lifecycle emphasized in the retrieved learnings. The requirement to establish success criteria upfront and work until "proven working" creates clear accountability.

Optional consideration: Handling edge cases

While the directive is clear, you might consider adding guidance for scenarios where success criteria can't be met (e.g., external blockers, insufficient permissions, or discovery that the approach needs rethinking). This could prevent potential conflicts with line 141's "NEVER end your turn without completing the task" directive. A simple addition could be:

If success criteria cannot be met, document blockers and seek user input rather than declaring partial success.

However, this is optional and may be implicit in the existing framework.

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148-148: Excellent addition for evidence-based completion reporting.

This instruction creates structured accountability by requiring explicit evidence of solutions, clear delineation of what needs user verification, and documentation of open questions. This directly supports the mission principle added on line 12.

Optional consideration: Emphasize as mandatory practice

Since the PR objectives describe this as a core countermeasure against premature success declarations, you might consider whether its placement in "Model-Specific Reinforcements" (which states "some need more than others") adequately conveys its importance.

If this is intended as a mandatory completion practice for all work, consider either:

1. Adding emphasis: "MANDATORY: After completing work, summarise..."
2. Moving it to a dedicated section after line 147's hierarchy

However, the current placement may be intentional for model training purposes, so this is purely optional.

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[github-actions]

🔍 Code Quality Report

�[0;35m[MONITOR]�[0m Code Review Monitoring Report

�[0;34m[INFO]�[0m Latest Quality Status:
SonarCloud: 0 bugs, 0 vulnerabilities, 46 code smells

�[0;34m[INFO]�[0m Recent monitoring activity:
Wed Feb 11 01:51:54 UTC 2026: Code review monitoring started
Wed Feb 11 01:51:55 UTC 2026: SonarCloud - Bugs: 0, Vulnerabilities: 0, Code Smells: 46

📈 Current Quality Metrics

• BUGS: 0
• CODE SMELLS: 46
• VULNERABILITIES: 0

Generated on: Wed Feb 11 01:51:57 UTC 2026

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Generated by AI DevOps Framework Code Review Monitoring

[sonarqubecloud]

Quality Gate passed

Issues
0 New issues
0 Accepted issues

Measures
0 Security Hotspots
0.0% Coverage on New Code
0.0% Duplication on New Code

See analysis details on SonarQube Cloud