chore: make ask_user header description more clear

[jackwotherspoon]

Summary

Adding more emphasis on having header be 16 chars or less.

This improves tool failing due to model creating longer than expected header labels.

[gemini-cli]

Hi @jackwotherspoon, thank you so much for your contribution to Gemini CLI! We really appreciate the time and effort you've put into this.

We're making some updates to our contribution process to improve how we track and review changes. Please take a moment to review our recent discussion post: Improving Our Contribution Process & Introducing New Guidelines.

Key Update: Starting January 26, 2026, the Gemini CLI project will require all pull requests to be associated with an existing issue. Any pull requests not linked to an issue by that date will be automatically closed.

Thank you for your understanding and for being a part of our community!

[gemini-code-assist]

Summary of Changes

Hello @jackwotherspoon, I'm Gemini Code Assist¹! I'm currently reviewing this pull request and will post my feedback shortly. In the meantime, here's a summary to help you and other reviewers quickly get up to speed!

This pull request refines the documentation for the header field within the AskUserTool to provide clearer instructions and prevent potential runtime issues. By emphasizing the strict 16-character limit and offering practical advice on abbreviations, it ensures that generated header labels conform to the required specifications, thereby enhancing the robustness of the tool.

Highlights

• Improved Header Description: The description for the header property in AskUserTool has been updated to explicitly state that it 'MUST be 16 characters or fewer or the call will fail'.
• Guidance on Abbreviations: New guidance has been added to encourage the use of abbreviations (e.g., 'Auth' not 'Authentication') to help users stay within the character limit.
• Preventing Tool Failures: This change aims to prevent tool failures that occur when models generate header labels exceeding the expected length.

Changelog

• packages/core/src/tools/ask-user.ts
  • Updated the description for the header property to clarify the 16-character maximum length and provide examples for abbreviations.

Activity

• The pull request was opened by jackwotherspoon with the title 'chore: make ask_user header description more clear'.
• The author provided a summary explaining that the change adds more emphasis on the 16-character header limit to prevent tool failures caused by longer labels.
• No further review comments or activities have been recorded yet.

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[gemini-cli]

Hi there! Thank you for your contribution to Gemini CLI.

To improve our contribution process and better track changes, we now require all pull requests to be associated with an existing issue, as announced in our recent discussion and as detailed in our CONTRIBUTING.md.

This pull request is being closed because it is not currently linked to an issue. Once you have updated the description of this PR to link an issue (e.g., by adding Fixes #123 or Related to #123), it will be automatically reopened.

How to link an issue:
Add a keyword followed by the issue number (e.g., Fixes #123) in the description of your pull request. For more details on supported keywords and how linking works, please refer to the GitHub Documentation on linking pull requests to issues.

Thank you for your understanding and for being a part of our community!

[gemini-code-assist]

Code Review

This pull request updates the description for the header parameter in the ask_user tool's schema. The change makes the 16-character length constraint more explicit to the language model, providing clear instructions, examples of abbreviations, and a warning that the call will fail if the limit is exceeded. This is a good prompt engineering improvement that should help prevent errors from the model generating overly long headers. The change is clear, correct, and I have no further suggestions.

[github-actions]

Size Change: +127 B (0%)

Total Size: 23.9 MB

ℹ️ View Unchanged

Filename	Size	Change
./bundle/gemini.js	23.8 MB	+127 B (0%)
./bundle/sandbox-macos-permissive-closed.sb	1.03 kB	0 B
./bundle/sandbox-macos-permissive-open.sb	890 B	0 B
./bundle/sandbox-macos-permissive-proxied.sb	1.31 kB	0 B
./bundle/sandbox-macos-restrictive-closed.sb	3.29 kB	0 B
./bundle/sandbox-macos-restrictive-open.sb	3.36 kB	0 B
./bundle/sandbox-macos-restrictive-proxied.sb	3.56 kB	0 B

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