Anatomy of an AI Agent System Prompt: What Claude Code's Instructions Reveal About Building Reliable Agents
Most people building AI agents start with the model. Pick a provider, write a quick prompt, plug it into a workflow. Ship it.
Then things go sideways. The agent overwrites files it shouldn’t touch. It over-engineers a simple fix. It hallucinates a URL. It runs a destructive command without asking. It adds “helpful” features nobody wanted.
The difference between an AI agent that works in a demo and one that works in production comes down to one thing: how well you instruct it.