OpenAI published a technical guide explaining recommended practices for working with GPT-6 Astra, noting behavioral differences from earlier models. The document focuses on adapting prompts and configuration to avoid inefficiencies.

Overview

According to OpenAI, Astra’s response patterns require revised prompting strategies and configuration choices, because many legacy prompts produce suboptimal outputs or extra processing. The guide outlines practical changes to align intent and execution.

Configuring AGENTS.md and Skills

OpenAI describes how to structure AGENTS.md and manage Skills to reduce instruction conflicts, unnecessary task duplication and waiting states. The recommendations include consolidating overlapping directives and clarifying role responsibilities within agent definitions.

• Audit overlapping instructions in AGENTS.md and merge or prioritize conflicting entries.
• Define minimal, purpose-specific Skills to prevent redundant processing and ambiguous calls.
• Prefer explicit success criteria and failure modes to avoid indefinite retries or stale expectations.

Verification prompt

OpenAI also shared a verification prompt template intended to evaluate a given configuration for sources of extra work, instruction conflicts and excessive waits. The template asks for explanations of causes and proposes minimal edits to improve efficiency.

The guide aims to help teams transition existing deployments to Astra without degrading performance, focusing on small, targeted changes rather than full rewrites.