An open standard for structured, data-driven prompt engineering.
The Open Prompt Specification (OPS) defines a vendor-neutral, model-agnostic way to design prompts as reusable, inspectable, and composable system components.
OPS exists to move prompt engineering from ad-hoc text to engineering-grade architectures.
As AI systems move into production, prompts have become critical infrastructure.
However, most prompts today are:
- Informal and unstructured
- Tightly coupled to specific models
- Difficult to reuse or audit
- Fragile under scale and change
OPS addresses this gap by defining how prompts should be designed, not how models work.
OPS specifies a standard architecture for prompts, including:
- Clear separation between system instructions and user data
- Explicit variable schemas
- Behavioral and validation rules
- Contractual output definitions
- Composable prompt components
OPS-compliant prompts behave like software components, not static messages.
OPS intentionally does NOT define:
- Model internals
- Agent orchestration
- Execution runtimes
- UI or UX patterns
OPS focuses exclusively on prompt architecture and structure.
An OPS Prompt Component consists of:
-
System Prompt Template
Defines role, intent, and constraints. -
User Prompt Template
Supplies real input data only. -
Variable Schema
Structured representation of extracted data. -
Rules Engine
Behavioral, validation, and output rules. -
Output Contract
Explicit format and schema for results.
- 📄 Technical Specification:
spec/ops-1.0.md - 📦 Canonical Schemas:
spec/ops-1.0.json,spec/ops-1.0.yaml - ✅ Compliance Checklist:
compliance/checklist.md - 🧩 Minimal Example:
minimal-summary.ops.jsonl
Nova is a reference implementation of OPS.
Nova provides tooling to:
- Validate OPS compliance
- Generate and compose prompt components
- Connect OPS components to execution platforms
Implementing OPS does not require using Nova.
The Open Prompt Specification (OPS) is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
This license allows both open-source and proprietary implementations of the specification.
See the LICENSE file for details.
OPS is vendor-neutral and designed to evolve through community collaboration.
- Contribution guidelines:
CONTRIBUTING.md - Governance model:
GOVERNANCE.md
By contributing, you agree that your contributions will be licensed under Apache License 2.0.
- Current version: OPS 1.0 (Draft)
- Stability: Suitable for experimentation and early adoption
- Roadmap: See
docs/roadmap.md
If you are new to OPS:
- Read the minimal example in
/examples/minimal - Review the compliance checklist
- Explore or build an OPS-compliant implementation
OPS is designed to be simple to adopt and powerful to scale.
Prompts are no longer experiments.
They are infrastructure.
OPS provides the foundation to build prompt systems that are reliable, auditable, and reusable.
OPS is the standard. Nova is the platform.