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instruction-phrasing-microtest

Use when changing the wording of a rule in a skill, prompt template, or agent instruction where the change is meant to alter model output.

.devin/skills/instruction-phrasing-microtest/SKILL.md

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Observed behavior
Instructions only
Last checked
Nov 4, 2026

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55
Repository last updated
Sep 28, 2026
License
Apache-2.0

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# Instruction phrasing microtest

## Contract

| Field | Bound contract |
|---|---|
| Trigger | About to change the wording of a rule in a skill, prompt template, or agent instruction, where the change is meant to alter what the model produces. |
| Authority | Reversible local: writes only a local results table file; rollback is deleting the results file. No remote mutation. No repository, VCS, credential, or paid mutation. |
| Side effect | Runs a bounded set of cheap single-call model samples against variant system prompts and writes a scored results table. No repository mutation. |
| Done | A results table exists comparing each variant against the control on programmatic markers, with every match hand-verified, and the adopted phrasing beats the control on the target metric without regressing the others, or the change is dropped as unmeasurable. |

## Inputs

1. **Control text** (required): the current wording of the rule or instruction being evaluated.