Start with one clear system instruction. Add skills and prompt templates only when behavior needs to be reusable or invoked for a specific task.

​
Write the base instruction

agent/system.md applies to every turn: 
# Incident investigator

Investigate operational reports using the available workspace and tools.

## Working rules

1. Read existing evidence before changing files.
2. Label assumptions explicitly.
3. Keep a chronological investigation log in `/workspace/investigation.md`.
4. Never expose credentials or raw secret values.

## Final response

Report the observed impact, likely cause, evidence, and next action.
Write instructions as observable behavior. Prefer “save the report to this path” over vague goals such as “be thorough.”

​
Add a reusable skill

Use a skill when a procedure should be discoverable and reusable across prompts. Create agent/skills/incident-triage/SKILL.md: 
---
name: incident-triage
description: Triage an incident and produce an evidence-backed assessment
disableModelInvocation: false
---

1. Read the available incident artifacts.
2. Build a timestamped event sequence.
3. Separate direct evidence from inference.
4. Record unresolved questions.
5. Produce a concise incident assessment.
Set disableModelInvocation: true when the skill should be selected only by trusted application logic rather than automatically by the model.

​
Add a named prompt

Use a prompt template for a repeatable user-facing task: agent/prompts/incident-report.md: 
---
name: incident-report
description: Produce the final report for an investigated incident
argumentHint: <incident-id>
---

Create a report containing the timeline, impact, cause, evidence, resolution, and follow-up work.

​
Choose the right mechanism

NeedUse
Rules that always applyagent/system.md
A reusable operating procedureSkill
A named task templatePrompt template
New executable behaviorExtension tool
Behavior around runtime eventsLifecycle hook
Skills and prompts are compiled into the immutable deployment. Changing them requires a new deployment.

​
Validate discovery

salambo manifest --path . --json
Confirm the compiled output contains the expected system prompt inputs, skill names, prompt names, and provenance. Next, configure built-in tools.