Vol. II · Production Doctrine · II.2
Own Your Prompts
Prompts are source code. If you cannot diff them, version them, and test them, you do not own the agent's policy.
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Doctrine
- Store prompts in git, not in a vendor dashboard you cannot export.
- Treat a prompt change like a code change: review, eval, deploy.
- Framework defaults are someone else's prompt. Read them before you inherit them.
Prompts as functions
Factor 2: own your prompts. Langfuse prompt management and promptfoo configs exist because prompts drift. DSPy goes further and compiles them against metrics — but you still own the metric and the module boundary.
Coding agents already do this: CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, skills. That is owned prompting at repo scale.
Anti-patterns
- Prompt soup concatenated at runtime from six hidden templates.
- A/B testing in production with no golden set.
- Letting a 'system prompt builder' mutate instructions per request with no log.