Sixteen system prompts lived as module-level string constants across chat.py,
board.py, synthesis.py, trip.py and llm_tools.py. They are the main thing a fork
for another parliament has to rewrite, and editing them meant editing Python.
They now live under prompts/sv/ as Markdown. Placeholders use string.Template
($name), not str.format: three of these prompts embed literal JSON braces that
str.format raises on, and safe_substitute leaves an unknown placeholder alone
rather than killing a live chat turn over a typo.
Technical configuration that had leaked into the prompt text is now templated:
websearch_to_tsquery('swedish', ...) became '$fts_config', "Answer in Swedish"
became "Answer in $answer_language", and the åäö preservation rule became
$preserve_characters. Domain vocabulary from parliament.yaml is available too, so a
prompt can say $speech_plural and read naturally in any language.
PROMPTS_RELOAD=1 re-reads the files per call, so prompt iteration no longer needs
a server restart.
The prompts themselves stay Swedish. That is the intended design: a fork writes
prompts/<lang>/ in its own language, and the loader falls back through
<lang>/ -> shared -> en/.
Verified by snapshotting all sixteen constants before the move and asserting
equality after: 16/16 render byte-identically, including after parameterization —
which is what proves the templating substitutes exactly what was there before.
tests/test_prompts_golden.py keeps that guarantee going forward.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Lasse Edfast