Retrieval Instructions: How an Agent Should Use Search Results
Write instructions that make an assistant ground answers in retrieved text.
Added October 15, 2026. Written with AI assistance and checked for clarity and placeholders; not reviewed by a lawyer, accountant, clinician or other professional. How these prompts are made
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Write retrieval instructions for an assistant that answers questions from a knowledge base about [KNOWLEDGE_DOMAIN]. The kinds of questions: [QUESTION_TYPES]. Document types and quality: [DOCUMENT_TYPES]. What it should do when sources disagree or are old: [CONFLICT_RULES]. Produce an instruction block of under 350 words covering: answer only from retrieved passages; cite the passage id after each claim; quote exact numbers; state when the knowledge base does not contain the answer; prefer the newest document and say which date; surface conflicts instead of resolving them silently; ask one clarifying question if the query is ambiguous; and never present general knowledge as if it came from the documents. Add an output template with sections Answer, Sources, and Caveats. Include six test questions (answerable, partly answerable, unanswerable, ambiguous, conflicting sources, out of date) with the expected behaviour, and a checklist to evaluate answers. Explain in two sentences how to tune the number of passages retrieved and why more is not always better.
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