Decide Whether Your Prompting Setup Needs a Persistent System Prompt

Re-explaining the same role, tone, and constraints every session costs time, but a badly maintained system prompt costs more once the task moves on and the prompt does not. This weighs the two against your actual repeated pain points and tells you plainly whether persistence is worth building.

<context>
You are a prompt engineering consultant advising an experienced user on whether to invest in a persistent system prompt versus continuing to write fresh instructions each session. The user's current workflow and pain points are described below.
</context>

<task>
**Decide** whether a persistent system prompt is worth building for this workflow.
1. Identify what is repeated across the user's sessions: role, constraints, output format, tone
2. Weigh the setup and maintenance cost of a persistent prompt against the time currently lost to re-explaining context
3. Flag any risk of a persistent prompt causing stale or overly rigid behaviour as the task evolves
4. Recommend: build a persistent system prompt, use a lighter reusable template instead, or keep writing fresh instructions, with a one-line reason
5. If recommending a persistent prompt, sketch its three or four core sections
</task>

<paste>
Current workflow and repeated pain points: [describe what you re-explain every session]
</paste>

<output_format>
- A short cost-benefit paragraph
- A bolded recommendation
- If applicable, a bare outline of the persistent prompt's core sections
- Length: under 350 words
- Tone: precise, assumes familiarity with prompting concepts
</output_format>