Voice Agent Prompting: 8-Block Structure and Critical Guardrails
DeskCaller_AI · reddit · 2026-08-24
Author details a universal 8-block prompt structure for building restaurant voice agents: Identity, Context, Personality/Tone, Response Rules, Tasks/Workflows, Tools, Guardrails, and Examples.
Key takeaways:
- Separate Facts from Prompts: Dynamic info like menus and prices should be in a knowledge base, not baked into the prompt, to prevent behavioral regression on updates.
- Tool-Result Guardrail: The most critical rule is to never confirm a booking/order unless the tool explicitly returns success, preventing the worst failure mode.
- Order Matters: Guardrails go near the end and are repeated, as models tend to skip early rules in long calls. Identity and context must come first.
More from coding & agent
- Study: Agents read instructions/notes 60.5% of the time, rarely touch API docs — dair_ai · 2026-08-24
- Claude Verifies 43 Lean Modules autonomously, Tackling Theoretical Physics — Tkaraletsos · 2026-08-24
- Compound Engineering Plugin Rewrite Cuts Context Usage by 70% — iamrobotbear · 2026-08-24
- Lighter's prover challenge breaks 100k TPS, 10x above launch baseline in weeks — econoar · 2026-08-24
- AI fakes memory: why it gets confidently wrong without forgetting — PrajwalTomar_ · 2026-08-24
- Observation suggests Codex continues running tasks long after weekly credits run out — gandamu_ml · 2026-08-24