CCAR-F objective 4.1 · Domain 4 · 20% of the exam

System Prompts with Explicit Criteria

The recurring failure is a criterion the prompt never defines. Asking an agent to flag anything suspicious leaves it inventing a standard, and a slightly different one each run, so the fix is named categories with a stated rule each and a worked example anchoring the boundary. The other half is knowing when the prompt is the wrong instrument. Requirements phrased with never or without exception are guarantees, and a prompt raises the odds while leaving a tail; appending the text in code removes the model from the requirement. Length is examined too: a rule lost among thirty others is not fixed by adding a thirty-second.