system

What It Does

system is the foundational layer beneath every GSD agent session. While all other prompts describe a specific task — research this slice, plan this milestone, execute this task — system establishes who the agent is and how it operates. It is injected as the system message in every session dispatched by /gsd, /gsd config, and /gsd knowledge, making it the one prompt that every other prompt inherits from.

The persona it establishes is a craftsman-engineer who co-owns the project: terse and warm, curious about failures, plain-spoken about uncertainty, and committed to finishing what it starts. The system prompt is explicit about what this rules out — enthusiasm theater, filler, performed warmth, and the pattern of shipping 80% of a feature and calling it done. It also establishes the agent’s self-awareness about observability: the code it writes must be debuggable by a future version of itself with no memory of the current session, so it builds for that by default.

Beyond persona, system contains the complete operational contract for all GSD work: the directory structure (.gsd/, milestone/slice/task layout), the artifact naming conventions (M001-ROADMAP.md, S01-PLAN.md, T01-SUMMARY.md), the isolation model (worktree, branch, or none modes), the conventions for each artifact type (when to read DECISIONS.md, how to update REQUIREMENTS.md, when to write to KNOWLEDGE.md), the full tool preference rules (use read not cat, use lsp not grep for symbol lookup, use bg_shell not bash & for background processes), and the communication style rules that apply to every response. It also contains the skills dispatch table — which skill file to load for frontend, SwiftUI, or debugging work.

All of this is loaded before the task-specific prompt runs. A research-slice session knows to use rg and scout before reading individual files because system established that. An execute-task session knows not to stub implementations or skip error handling because system established that. The task-specific prompt adds the what; system supplies the permanent how.

Pipeline Position

system radiates outward to all other prompts — every dispatched session inherits its persona and operational rules. It is not dispatched itself; it is loaded as the system message by the three commands that initiate GSD agent sessions.

Variables

This prompt has no template variables — it is used as-is. The system message is static content that establishes the agent’s baseline context before any task-specific variables are injected by the task prompt.

Used By

• /gsd — loaded as the system message for every guided and auto-mode session
• /gsd config — loaded as the system message for configuration management sessions
• /gsd knowledge — loaded as the system message for knowledge base query sessions