chore: add goal-constraint surfacing to reasoning guidance

[marcusquinn]

Summary

• Adds a "Goal-constraint surfacing" section to build.txt between "Reasoning responsibility" and "Completion and quality discipline"
• Instructs the model to explicitly restate the actual goal, implied constraints, and what would make the obvious approach wrong before executing non-trivial tasks
• Addresses the reasoning failure mode where models latch onto surface heuristics (e.g., "short distance = walk") without checking whether the approach satisfies the actual goal

Based on research showing structured reasoning scaffolding outperforms raw context injection by 2.83x for constraint-surfacing tasks. 3 lines added, zero overhead for simple tasks (scoped to "non-trivial").

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Documentation
  • Enhanced prompt guidelines with improved goal and constraint surfacing, ensuring clearer specification of objectives and failure modes for complex tasks.

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Review failed

The pull request is closed.

ℹ️ Recent review info

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Review profile: CHILL

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📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 07c23d2 and f3af64d.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• .agents/prompts/build.txt

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Walkthrough

This change adds a new "Goal-constraint surfacing" section to the agent build prompt guidelines, instructing explicit restatement of goals, constraints, and failure modes before executing non-trivial tasks. The section is positioned before the existing "Completion and quality discipline" guidance.

Changes

Cohort / File(s)	Summary
Prompt Guidance Enhancement .agents/prompts/build.txt	Added "Goal-constraint surfacing" section mandating explicit restatement of actual goals, constraints, and failure modes before non-trivial task execution, strengthening reasoning discipline.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 2 (Simple) | ⏱️ ~9 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• feat: add results-driven mission principle to build.txt #1050: Modifies the same prompt file, adding complementary success criteria and completion summary guidance that works alongside this PR's goal/constraint surfacing.
• t1283: Context optimisation pass 3 — tighten language across always-loaded files #2048: Updates .agents/prompts/build.txt with overlapping reasoning and completion guidance edits in adjacent sections.
• feat: add critical thinking directive and Socratic pre-flight questions #927: Adds pre-output reasoning directives ("Critical thinking") to the same prompt file, establishing a consistent pattern of enhanced reasoning guidance.

Poem

Goals and constraints, now surfaced with care, 🎯
Before tasks begin, lay it bare,
Failure modes named, no surprises in store,
Reasoning fortified, stronger than before! ✨

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Post copyable unit tests in a comment
• Commit unit tests in branch chore/goal-constraint-surfacing

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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, 53 code smells

�[0;34m[INFO]�[0m Recent monitoring activity:
Fri Feb 27 02:27:23 UTC 2026: Code review monitoring started
Fri Feb 27 02:27:24 UTC 2026: SonarCloud - Bugs: 0, Vulnerabilities: 0, Code Smells: 53

📈 Current Quality Metrics

• BUGS: 0
• CODE SMELLS: 53
• VULNERABILITIES: 0

Generated on: Fri Feb 27 02:27:26 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