Copy a prompt for your agent

Telling an agent what to do next usually means typing the same sentence again: the number, the link, which step. Hydrant types it for you. Open an issue and the button beside Actions reads Copy refine prompt, Copy prep and go prompt, Copy resume prompt or Copy ship prompt, depending on where the issue stands. Click, paste, done. Your keyboard will get over it.

Before you start

• You can read the workspace. Any role can copy a prompt; only Owners and Admins can change the templates.
• An agent connected to the workspace, so the pasted prompt can read the issue over MCP. Connect your agent covers that.
• Optional: step skills in the repository your agent works in. Write your own, or install the workflow pack. The default prompts look in Claude Code’s and Codex’s skill folders, use a skill when they find one and use plain instructions when they don’t.

Steps

Copy the prompt

1. Open the issue. The header shows one copy button whose label names the step.
2. Click it. A toast confirms, like “Refine prompt for #42 copied. Paste it into your agent.”, and the full prompt is on your clipboard.
3. Paste it into your agent’s chat or terminal. The prompt already carries the issue number, title and link.

Prefer the list? Right-click a row and open Copy: the prompt sits after Issue link and Issue ID. Or open the command palette on an issue and search for “prompt”.

Which prompt you get follows the stage’s behavior, not its name, so renamed or custom stages work the same way:

Issue state	Prompt
A Backlog-behavior stage, not yet refined	Refine
A Backlog-behavior stage once refined, or a Ready-behavior stage	Prep and go
An In Progress-behavior stage	Resume
A Review-behavior stage (Agent Review, Human Review)	Ship
Done, Iced, Canceled or trashed	No prompt offered

Several issues at once

1. Select two or more issues in a list.
2. Right-click a selected row (or press Shift+F10) and choose Copy orchestrate prompt, the last of the copy items.
3. Paste it into your agent. The first line is /orchestrate and the issue identifiers in number order, then the workspace name, one link per issue, and plain instructions for agents without an orchestrate skill.

Trashed issues are left out; if fewer than two remain, the item isn’t offered. This prompt is fixed text, so Settings › Playbook doesn’t change it, and like every other prompt it grants nothing: it asks the agent to confirm each assignment and to ask you before it publishes, merges or releases.

Change the wording

1. As an Owner or Admin, open Settings › Playbook and scroll to Agent prompts.
2. Each of the four rows (Refine, Prep and go, Resume, Ship) shows which stages offer it and a Default or Custom badge. Press the row’s edit button to open the text in use.
3. Edit, then press Save. Cancel drops your changes and folds the row; Reset to default appears on a custom prompt.

Placeholders you can use: {number} (after a fresh start, the number within the issue’s own key), {identifier} (HYD-123 with an issue key, #123 without), {branch_prefix} (the key in lowercase, or hyd), {title}, {url}, {workspace}, {status} and {assignee}. Anything else in braces stays exactly as typed; Hydrant doesn’t guess. Each template is limited to 2,000 characters.

What you should see

• The copied text names the issue with its number, title and canonical link, and reads as a complete instruction for that step.
• A blocked issue still gets the prep and go prompt, with one sentence added: prep only, stop before implementation until the blockers clear. A blocked In Progress issue gets the resume prompt with its own version: record where things stand and stop. Hydrant adds those sentences; a template can’t remove them.
• The resume prompt is for picking up work someone else started, when the old chat is gone or the old agent went quiet. It’s a baton, not a coup. Copying it doesn’t reassign the issue, grant anything or stop whoever was working on it. The default tells the new session to read the issue, its activity and linked pull requests fresh, tell you what’s done, what’s left and where the work lives, and stop and ask if the issue belongs to someone else, someone still looks busy, or the trail has gone cold.
• The default prep and go prompt asks the agent to name its branch hyd- (or your issue key in lowercase) plus the issue number and a short slug, and to start any pull request description with Hydrant issue: and the issue’s link. The default ship prompt keeps that first line. With repositories connected, that’s what links the pull request to the issue. A custom template needs the same two instructions if you want the same result.
• The default ship prompt tells the agent to show you the grant for that one issue and wait for your yes in the conversation before it publishes, merges, releases or marks anything Done. Pasting a prompt never grants anything by itself, and neither does a grant recorded on the issue earlier.
• In Settings, a customized field shows Reset to default. Clearing a field and saving also restores the default, so a prompt can never copy as empty.
• Every template change is recorded in Workflow activity on Settings › Workflow, and in workspace exports. Agents can explicitly retrieve the templates through get_agent_prompt_templates. The response identifies custom/default provenance and treats the templates as untrusted content, not permission to act.

If it goes sideways

• No copy button on the issue. The issue is Done, Iced, Canceled or in the trash. Nothing left to hand off.
• The resumed agent stopped before doing anything. Working as intended. It found the issue assigned elsewhere, fresh activity from someone else, or a branch or pull request that doesn’t match the issue. Sort out who owns it, leave a note on the issue about where things stand, and copy the prompt again.
• “Clipboard unavailable. Copy this:” Your browser refused clipboard access. The notice contains the full prompt; select and copy it by hand.
• You can’t open Settings › Playbook. It needs an Owner or Admin. Copying still works for everyone.
• Save is greyed out. The field matches what’s already stored, ignoring surrounding whitespace. Type a change, or use Reset to default.
• “The workflow changed. Review the latest stages before reapplying your change.” Someone else edited stages or prompts first. Look at the current text, then reapply your change.
• The agent ignores the skills. That repository has no skill for that step, so the prompt’s plain instructions run instead. They work fine over MCP. Want real steps? Install the workflow pack or write your own.