Skip to content

MCP

Prompt Template Resource System Specification

Overview

A token-efficient system for referencing external resources in LLM prompts without including their full content, designed to optimize token usage when LLMs generate template calls.

Template Definition Syntax

@template
def template_name(param1, param2, ...):
    # I recognize that these should really be chat messages
    return Template("""
    Template content with placeholders:

    <param1>
    {{param1}}
    </param1>

    <param2>
    {{param2}}
    </param2>
    """)

Resource Reference Types

Type Syntax Description
File file://path/to/resource.txt Load content from file system
String "Direct content" Use literal string value
Tagged Output context://<tag_type>#<id> Reference session-based generated content with any tag
Image image://path/to/image.jpg Reference image resource
Audio audio://path/to/audio.mp3 Reference audio resource
Video video://path/to/video.mp4 Reference video resource

Template Usage

# Basic usage with mixed resource types
response = template_name(
    param1="file://path/to/resource.txt",
    param2="This is direct string content"
)

# Using various tagged output references
response = template_name(
    param1="context://artifact#summary-12345",
    param2="context://thought#reasoning-67890",
    param3="context://candidate-profile"
)

Tagged Outputs & Memory Management

XML Tag Creation and Reference

Any XML tag can be used to create referenceable content. Examples:

<artifact id="summary-123">
Professional developer with 10 years experience...
</artifact>

<thought id="reasoning-456">
This candidate has strong technical skills but limited management experience.
</thought>

<response id="feedback-789">
Your solution correctly implements the algorithm but could be optimized further.
</response>

Reference in subsequent calls:

create_notion_page(title=str, body="context://artifact#summary-123")
follow_up_question(reasoning="context://thought#reasoning-456")
email_template(feedback="context://response#feedback-789")

Error Handling

Error Behavior
Missing file Return error with path information
Invalid resource ID Return error with invalid ID
Permission issues Return security constraint error
Malformed template Return syntax error with details

Comments

Generally, I think here that if we can just save XML tagged data as resources and get names back out, that we can pass them around as context in a way that's more productive.