Prohibition Lists

Prohibition Lists

A prohibition list is a paragraph of three or more sentences that start with Do not, Don't, Never, or Avoid. A list of what not to do anchors the failure that it forbids. So claudetto keeps such a list only when its failure reproduces on the target model.

The Rule

• A list can stay only when its failure reproduces on the target model.
• A rule with no check becomes a hook, an allowlist, or a schema check, or it goes.
• The source is prompt-audit.md:100 and :119 of the claude-api skill (copy of 2026-10-16).

Kept Prohibition Lists

No text under src/plugins/ keeps a list. On 2026-10-16, one paragraph had a list. One sentence said again what another rule says, so it was deleted. The two other sentences stay, because each guards a failure the slice saw.

tests/claudetto/prompt/prohibitions.test.ts reads this section. It fails on a new list unless an entry is added here. An entry is a line that starts with a file path in single backticks.

See Also

• Model Guidance
• Probes 2.1.301
• Evidence