Lesson 1: Prompt design and the answer contract
21 min read·13 Oct 2026
Module 9 · Lesson 1 · About 45 minutes · Needs: Module 8 Lesson 2 (the context assembler) and Module 1 Lesson 1 (the first grounded answer)
The situation
On Friday 9 October 2026 Ellie Shaw asks whether her repeated E7 fault is covered. Module 8 hands the answer step three labelled documents. Module 1's four-sentence rules produced free text, and no code could tell an answer from a refusal.
Grace sets the bar: a source for every claim, an honest "I don't know" that hands over to a person, and archived terms that never win. This lesson writes the system prompt and the answer form for hollin/answer.py. The Hollin data is simulated.