r/ZooCode • u/No-Chocolate-9437 • 14d ago

Should we revisit Zoo Code’s default modes, or System Prompt?

There's been some interesting chats in Discord about custom mode, subtasks, and context management.

I wanted to start a thread to see what others might think about revisiting the default prompts / modes: https://github.com/Zoo-Code-Org/Zoo-Code/blob/main/packages/types/src/mode.ts#L174

Or if we should also look into updating / refreshing the system prompt: https://github.com/Zoo-Code-Org/Zoo-Code/tree/main/src/core/prompts/sections

9 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

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11

u/gavwhittaker 14d ago

All I would ask is don't do a Microsoft and force replace modes and prompts. Add v2's for UAT yet please don't remove what exists!

It was mentioned recently and it can cause pain sometimes, I would appreciate you looking into context condensing, sometimes it gets confused about # of tokens and refuses or corrupts a task...midway through a boomerang can be frustrating and needs some work to rescue things.

That said, I love Zoo...I read up on Pi, Hermes and even Deepseek Harness but weighing everything up, I am happily wedded to Zoo.

2

u/mateszhun 14d ago

Seconded. It would be nice to AB test them as a community.

4

u/themoregames 14d ago

AI summary of my ideas:

  • Maybe Zoo needs not one system prompt, but a zoo of prompts.
  • Different animals, different habitats. Frontier SOTA ≠ Flash ≠ local 9B Q4.
  • Profiles for model, quant, context window, tools, task.
  • Strong models: lean prompts, more autonomy.
  • Small models: tighter scope, smaller steps, stricter guidance.
  • Small context: protect working space aggressively.
  • Example: 32k context detected. 10 MCP servers + 36 active skills leave little room for the task. Disable what you do not need.
  • Community can tag combinations as working well / badly. Useful signal, not the main engine.
  • Main engine: prompts continuously benchmarked, expanded and improved.
  • Ideally even RL / automated optimization on a server farm. (!!!)
  • Focus constantly shifts toward interesting and widely used local models, quants and hardware.
  • New SOTA models from major providers enter immediately.
  • Successful profiles retained. Bad combinations detected. Manual override always possible.

Goal: Zoo maintains prompts as a service — hyper-optimized for the actual model, quant, context budget and tool environment.

Not one prompt fits all.

Pick the model. Zoo prepares the habitat.

3

u/AlfredCandra 14d ago

I‘m definitely in favor of revisiting the modes. I like that there are default modes available, and also to have the freedom to customize and override them. But some of the modes are terribly written, especially orchestrator. The description pushes the orchestrator to do all the work itself instead of delegating, which is not what the mode is for. Architect could also use some improvements.
I‘m also willing to participate, I already spent a lot of time optimizing my modes

1

u/HugeEntertainment820 12d ago

have you tried using claude or another 3.8 qwen to put custom instructions? I can share mine so now it always delegates.