IdeaSift

Agent builders wrestle with bloated prompts and opaque workflows

n8n builders and other agent developers struggle to manage long, overlapping prompts: they consume context and are cumbersome to debug across multi-prompt workflows. The evidence points to gaps in progressive disclosure, external prompt references, and visibility into the prompts and inputs flowing through agents. One related request is for a simpler way to trigger OpenAI Agents from n8n.

For n8n builders and developers maintaining multi-prompt agent workflows. Mentioned from May 2025 to Mar 2026 on product forums and Hacker News.

5 different people described this problem in 4 separate discussions.

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0 mentions in the last 12 weeks
Indie fit
6.0/10
Pain
5.2/10
Frequency
6.5/10
Willingness to pay
0.0/10
Momentum
5.0/10
Who pays
Professionals
Competition
Medium
Build difficulty
Medium

What people said

Quoted word for word. Follow a link to read the whole discussion.

  1. I’ve been running into this exact problem managing several production agents with large, overlapping system prompts — the context window cost adds up fast, and there’s no clean way to do progressive disclosure natively
    OMGItsDerek on community.n8n.ioMar 2026Asked for a toolHas a workaround
  2. The size and complexity of the system prompt has been a limiting factor
    mdlmarkham on community.n8n.ioJan 2026+35 likesAsked for a tool
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