I have written a skill which asks questions one at a time. I’d love to leverage the special clarifying questions UI feature for this, but at this time my questions are just asked as regular text and I have to type in the answers.
Is there a special format or prompt I need to specify for the UI to show as clarifying questions?
Hey, good question. The follow-up questions UI is tied to the agent’s built-in Ask questions tool. When the agent uses that tool (instead of just typing a question as plain text), a special UI shows up with clickable options.
To trigger it from your skill, tell the agent explicitly to use this tool in your SKILL.md. For example:
## Instructions
- When you need to clarify requirements, use the ask questions tool
- Do not ask questions as plain text - always use the ask questions tool
- Ask one question at a time
The official docs do hint at this in the SKILL.md template:
Use the ask questions tool if you need to clarify requirements with the user
That said, the agent may not use the tool consistently every time, depending on how the model interprets the instructions. It helps to be as explicit as possible like “always use the ask questions tool, never ask questions as plain text.”
Let me know if it worked for you.
Hi Dean,
I am sorry to report that this documented approach doesn’t seem to work. I am in “agent” mode: “There is no “ask questions” tool in this environment, so I’ll ask in chat with concrete options.”
I tried “plan” mode but instead of following my skill, the cursor system prompt seem to override my instructions and it goes off an generates a plan.
Bummer