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System prompt updates to handle search subagent#4500

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bhavyaus merged 25 commits intomicrosoft:mainfrom
24anisha:anisha/search_opusprompt
Mar 18, 2026
Merged

System prompt updates to handle search subagent#4500
bhavyaus merged 25 commits intomicrosoft:mainfrom
24anisha:anisha/search_opusprompt

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Prompt Updates

  • Add prompt for Opus 4.6 to discourage parallel search subagent tool calling and overuse.
  • Add line to OpenAI models gpt 5 - 5.4 prompt to encourage use

Search Subagent

  • Increased prompt token context window limit from 128k to 260k, per context window limit from Fireworks

Copilot AI review requested due to automatic review settings March 18, 2026 20:28
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vs-code-engineering bot commented Mar 18, 2026

📬 CODENOTIFY

The following users are being notified based on files changed in this PR:

@bryanchen-d

Matched files:

  • src/extension/prompts/node/agent/anthropicPrompts.tsx

bhavyaus
bhavyaus previously approved these changes Mar 18, 2026
@vs-code-engineering vs-code-engineering bot added this to the 1.113.0 milestone Mar 18, 2026
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Pull request overview

Updates agent system prompts to steer codebase exploration toward the Search Subagent, and increases the agentic search proxy’s prompt token budget to support larger context when running the search subagent.

Changes:

  • Increase ProxyAgenticSearchEndpoint max_prompt_tokens from 128k to 260k.
  • Add guidance to multiple OpenAI agent prompts to prefer SearchSubagent over direct file/text/codebase search tools (when available).
  • Update the Claude 4.6 default prompt to additionally discourage repeated/parallel SearchSubagent usage.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 9 out of 9 changed files in this pull request and generated no comments.

Show a summary per file
File Description
src/platform/endpoint/node/proxyAgenticSearchEndpoint.ts Raises the prompt token limit for the agentic-search proxy endpoint used by the search subagent.
src/extension/tools/node/searchSubagentTool.ts Removes an extra blank line (no functional change).
src/extension/prompts/node/agent/openai/gpt5CodexPrompt.tsx Adds conditional instruction to prefer SearchSubagent for exploration.
src/extension/prompts/node/agent/openai/gpt54Prompt.tsx Adds conditional instruction to prefer SearchSubagent for exploration.
src/extension/prompts/node/agent/openai/gpt53CodexPrompt.tsx Adds SearchSubagent preference instruction (and fixes a missing <br /> for prompt formatting).
src/extension/prompts/node/agent/openai/gpt52Prompt.tsx Adds conditional instruction to prefer SearchSubagent for exploration.
src/extension/prompts/node/agent/openai/gpt51CodexPrompt.tsx Adds conditional instruction to prefer SearchSubagent for exploration.
src/extension/prompts/node/agent/defaultAgentInstructions.tsx Adds conditional instruction to prefer SearchSubagent for exploration in default tool-use guidance.
src/extension/prompts/node/agent/anthropicPrompts.tsx Strengthens Claude 4.6 guidance: prefer SearchSubagent but avoid repeated/parallel calls.

@bhavyaus bhavyaus enabled auto-merge March 18, 2026 21:27
@bhavyaus bhavyaus added this pull request to the merge queue Mar 18, 2026
Merged via the queue into microsoft:main with commit 9724f2a Mar 18, 2026
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5 participants