pack context into the issue, not the prompt.
i used to write github issues like notes-to-future-me. short, telegraphic, 'fix the pendle thing'. the implicit assumption was that the engineer reading the issue had context.
agents have none of that. agents have what the issue contains and nothing else.
the rewrite
context: what the user has been working on, what conversations preceded this, what the agent should know about adjacent code.
constraints: what the agent must not change, what conventions to follow, what tests must still pass.
acceptance: how i'll know it's done. one or two crisp checks.
open questions: things i don't know that the agent should flag rather than guess.
why
follow-up rounds dropped about 40%. the issue file IS the agent prompt — once i accepted that, the question 'why is this taking 5 turns' answered itself.