Guiding Principles (Tenets) System

Overview

The Guiding Principles system provides persistent, context-aware instructions to maintain consistency across AI interactions and combat context drift.

Injection Strategy

graph TD
    subgraph "Injection Decision Engine"
        ANALYZER[Content Analyzer<br/>Structure & complexity]
        STRATEGY[Strategy Selector<br/>Top, distributed, contextual]
        INJECTOR[Smart Injector<br/>Natural break detection]
    end

    subgraph "Priority System"
        CRITICAL[Critical Principles<br/>Security, data integrity]
        HIGH[High Priority<br/>Architecture, performance]
        MEDIUM[Medium Priority<br/>Style, conventions]
        LOW[Low Priority<br/>Preferences, suggestions]
    end

    subgraph "Reinforcement"
        TOP_INJECTION[Top of Context<br/>Most visible]
        DISTRIBUTED[Throughout Content<br/>Natural sections]
        END_SUMMARY[End Reinforcement<br/>Key reminders]
    end

    ANALYZER --> STRATEGY
    STRATEGY --> INJECTOR

    CRITICAL --> TOP_INJECTION
    HIGH --> DISTRIBUTED
    MEDIUM --> DISTRIBUTED
    LOW --> END_SUMMARY

Output Formats

Markdown:

Markdown

**🎯 Key Guiding Principle:** Always validate user input before processing
**📌 Important Guiding Principle:** Use async/await for all I/O operations
**💡 Guiding Principle:** Prefer composition over inheritance

XML (Recommended by OpenAI):

XML

<guiding_principle priority="high" category="security">
  Always validate and sanitize user input
</guiding_principle>

<guiding_principles>
  <guiding_principle priority="critical">Maintain backward compatibility</guiding_principle>
  <guiding_principle priority="medium">Use descriptive variable names</guiding_principle>
</guiding_principles>

Configuration

YAML

tenet:
  auto_instill: true
  max_per_context: 5
  injection_strategy: strategic
  injection_frequency: adaptive  # 'always', 'periodic', 'adaptive', 'manual'
  injection_interval: 3          # For periodic mode
  min_session_length: 1          # First injection always happens
  system_instruction: "Prefer small, safe diffs and add tests"
  system_instruction_enabled: true