diff --git a/src/workspaces/officerdev/src/apps/Chat/background-job-prompt.ts b/src/workspaces/officerdev/src/apps/Chat/background-job-prompt.ts
index 8e3719eb..2e0c5009 100644
--- a/src/workspaces/officerdev/src/apps/Chat/background-job-prompt.ts
+++ b/src/workspaces/officerdev/src/apps/Chat/background-job-prompt.ts
@@ -106,6 +106,19 @@ export function buildBackgroundJobPrompt(spec: BackgroundJobSpec): string {
     `condition fails silently: it either never fires or fires constantly, and I find out days later.`,
     `Arming it late costs a minute; arming it wrong costs whatever I was relying on it for.`,
     ``,
-    `When it is armed, tell me in one line what you started and how to stop it.`,
+    `A question is the ONLY thing that may come before starting.`,
+    ``,
+    `OUTPUT:`,
+    ``,
+    `Say nothing before you start it. No preface, no restating what I asked for, no announcing that`,
+    `you are about to follow the instructions.`,
+    ``,
+    `Then ONE line: what is running, its background id, how to stop it. That is the whole reply.`,
+    `No notes, no observations, no explaining what you chose or why, nothing you happened to notice`,
+    `along the way. If any of it mattered I would ask.`,
+    ``,
+    `Do not read the output back to check it started. If it fails, the exit reaches me on its own —`,
+    `that is the entire point of using the harness's mechanism, and checking by hand just adds noise`,
+    `to the one case where nothing is wrong.`,
   ].join('\n');
 }