Enhancing LLM Instruction Following: An Evaluation-Driven Multi-Agentic Workflow for Prompt Instructions Optimization

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Authors: Alberto Purpura, Li Wang, Sahil Badyal, Eugenio Beaufrand, Adam M. Faulkner
Cited by: 0

Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) often generate substantively relevant content but fail to adhere to formal constraints, leading to outputs that are conceptually correct but procedurally flawed. Traditional prompt refinement approaches focus on rephrasing the description of the primary task an LLM has to perform, neglecting the granular constraints that function as acceptance criteria for its response. We propose a novel multi-agentic workflow that decouples optimization of the primary task description from its constraints, using quantitative scores as feedback to iteratively rewrite and improve them. Our evaluation demonstrates this method produces revised prompts that yield significantly higher compliance scores from models like Llama 3.1 8B and Mixtral-8x 7B.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Topic Modeling Text Readability and Simplification Natural Language Processing Techniques

Publication details

Journal / source
arXiv (Cornell University)
Publication date
6 January 2026
Document type
Preprint