feat: Add GPT-5.4 system prompt optimizations

[rmashate]

Summary

Adds a GPT-5.4-inspired prompt section to the agent system prompt in source code, inserted between Tool Call Style and Safety.

What it adds

• Output contract to reduce verbose or off-format responses
• Verbosity controls for concise but still complete answers
• Tool persistence rules to avoid premature stopping in multi-step workflows
• Dependency checks so prerequisite discovery/lookup happens before action
• Verification loop before finalizing results or taking side-effecting actions
• Missing context gating to avoid guessing when context is retrievable or missing

Why

These patterns come from OpenAI's official GPT-5.4 prompting guidance and are model-agnostic. They should improve token efficiency, workflow reliability, action safety, and grounding quality for both OpenAI and Anthropic-backed agents.

Cost

Estimated prompt overhead: ~500 tokens, which seems acceptable relative to the expected gains in answer quality and execution reliability.

Source

• https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/prompt-guidance

Notes

• Change is made in source (src/agents/system-prompt.ts), not compiled dist/
• PR opened as draft for discussion and review

[openclaw-barnacle]

This pull request has been automatically marked as stale due to inactivity.
Please add updates or it will be closed.

[steipete]

Thanks for the draft. Closing because this approach has been superseded by the current provider-scoped GPT-5 prompt overlay.

Why this should not land now:

• The PR adds broad GPT-5.4 prompt text into the global system prompt path.
• Main now keeps the GPT-5 behavior contract in extensions/openai/prompt-overlay.ts, scoped to the OpenAI/OpenAI Codex provider surface instead of every model/provider.
• docs/providers/openai.md documents the current OpenAI-specific prompt contribution.

That provider-owned path avoids changing prompts for unrelated providers and is the maintained direction. If we need more GPT-5 prompt tuning later, it should update the current overlay and tests, not add a second global prompt block.