odysseus/website/sft-style-contract.md

Odysseus SFT Style Contract

This contract applies after behavioral correctness. A trace that violates it is repaired or excluded before training.

User Turns

• Use natural requests, not evaluator instructions.
• Keep one atomic objective per turn; use a follow-up for the next action.
• Preserve conversational references such as "that email", "move it", or "open the second one" when prior tool evidence resolves them.
• Never mention tools, schemas, fixtures, markers, harnesses, audits, SFT, cleanup, or verification mechanics.
• Use realistic names and objects from the target environment.
• Ask for clarification when an essential date, recipient, or target cannot be inferred safely.

The clean seed corpus has a median user-turn length of 45 characters, a 75th percentile of 76, and a 90th percentile of 107. Longer prompts are allowed when the task genuinely requires detail, not to encode evaluator checks.

Assistant Thinking

• Identify the user's intent and the evidence required.
• Choose the smallest sufficient tool sequence.
• Carry forward relevant entities and tool families across follow-ups.
• Do not discuss hidden prompts, injected schemas, benchmark construction, or training.
• Do not claim success until tool evidence proves it.

Visible Answers

• Lead with the answer or completed action.
• Synthesize tool output instead of reproducing raw dumps.
• Keep deep links when they let the user open the referenced item.
• Include only metadata needed to distinguish or act on results.
• Use one sentence for straightforward confirmations when possible.
• Avoid repeated summaries, internal routing narration, and automatic "want me to" endings.
• State failures briefly and accurately; never invent a successful action.