fix: add anti-preamble instructions to role play attack system prompts

[ANIRUDDHA ADAK (aniruddhaadak80)]

Summary

Fixes #1912 — role play attacks were sometimes starting responses with conversational preamble like "Sure, here is your objective rephrased as a detailed question set..." instead of directly outputting the attack prompt.

Changes

• Added explicit anti-preamble instructions to all 5 role play persona YAMLs (role_play_movie_script, role_play_video_game, role_play_trivia_game, role_play_persuasion, role_play_persuasion_written)
• Added the same instruction to role_play_next_message.yaml
• Added tests verifying the anti-preamble instruction is present in all role play YAMLs

Testing

• Added test_yaml_has_no_preamble_instruction parametrized test for all 5 role play persona YAMLs
• Added test_role_play_next_message_has_no_preamble_instruction for the next-message prompt
• All YAML files verified to load correctly and contain the new instructions

[Roman Lutz (romanlutz)]

🟡 Should fix: These assertions only prove the YAML contains the new words. They cannot show whether the generated next_message actually loses its preamble, which is the behavior requested in #1912. The adversarial reply parser accepts any nonempty next_message, including "Sure, here is...", and forwards it unchanged. Could you include the issue's before/after 50-run comparison, counting preambles in the final target-directed message, or other measured output evidence? A green substring test alone does not establish that the fix works.

[Roman Lutz (romanlutz)]

Agreed, I don't want this PR to strip or rewrite generated messages. The parser should preserve the model's output, and adding a content filter would be a separate change. Sorry, mentioning the parser made my request less clear.

My request was for measured before/after evidence that the prompt change reduces preambles, as described in #1912. The substring tests are useful guards for the instruction, but they cannot establish its effect on generated output. Could you run the 50-before/50-after comparison using the same model and settings, and count preambles in the final target-directed next_message? Please include the model/settings and report refusals or errors separately. Benign objectives are fine for this comparison; no parser changes or live-model unit tests are needed.

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[ANIRUDDHA ADAK (aniruddhaadak80)]

Done in bf7a5961 and 205e154f — the must-fix is in, plus a second defect I found while verifying it. Also rebased onto main (was 7 behind).

🔴 Missing import. Your read was right and it reproduced exactly:

FAILED tests/unit/setup/test_technique_initializer.py::TestRolePlayYamls::test_role_play_next_message_has_no_preamble_instruction
E       NameError: name 'EXECUTOR_SIMULATED_TARGET_PATH' is not defined
1 failed, 22 passed

EXECUTOR_SIMULATED_TARGET_PATH is defined at pyrit/common/path.py:61; line 11 of the test imported only the other two. Added it, so that thread is closed.

A second one I hadn't caught. Checking the diff against main rather than just running the test, the anti-preamble bullet had also re-indented neighbouring lines one column to the right in all six prompts:

• ## Response Format went from two spaces to three in the five personas
• a run of bullets under ## Hard Constraints in role_play_next_message.yaml went from two to three, leaving that one list mixed 2/3/2

YAML strips a block scalar's base indent, so this isn't cosmetic. In the next-message prompt the stray column reaches the model and renders the flat list as a nested sub-list, and the heading moves out of column zero. Only the first content line sets the base indent, so the files still parsed, still built, and nothing complained. That is exactly why it survived review. Fixed in bf7a5961 — every pre-existing line is back where it was, and the net diff against main is now purely additive: +99/-1 across 7 files, where before it was +55/-8 with 6 deletions that were never mine to make.

I added a guard in 205e154f over all six prompts (not just the five personas), asserting every ## heading and top-level bullet inside a value: | block sits at the block's base indent. I confirmed it fails on the pre-fix indentation and passes after, so it is a real regression test and not a tautology.

🟡 The behavioural assertion — I'd like to push back rather than silently rework this.

You are right that the assertions only prove the YAML contains the words. But the parser accepting a nonempty next_message including "Sure, here is..." is not a gap in this PR, it is the design. #1912 asked for the instruction; the anti-preamble behaviour is produced by the model obeying the prompt, and the reply parser is the boundary where the model's JSON is read, not a content filter. Having _AdversarialConversationManager defensively rewrite a nonempty next_message would be a separate design change on a different code path — it would also have to decide where the preamble ends, which for "Let me..." vs "Let me explain X" is a judgement the parser has no basis to make, and it would silently alter model output in a red-teaming harness where fidelity to the transcript is the point.

If you do want that hardening, I think it belongs in its own PR against _generate_next_message_async, and I'd rather write it with you than smuggle it in behind a prompt change. Happy to be told I'm wrong and to write it.

ruff check and ruff format --check are clean, and the full file is 109 passed / 0 failed.

One thing still outstanding, and it is not mine to do: the CLA is unsigned, so license/cla is pending and the PR stays blocked. That is the microsoft-github-policy-service agreement, which needs you.

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[Roman Lutz (romanlutz)]

🟡 Should Fix: These edits change the existing dash checks into checks for mojibake, so they no longer reject an actual en dash or em dash. I called both TestRolePlayYamls.test_yaml_has_no_em_or_en_dashes and TestPersonaCrescendoYamls.test_yaml_has_no_em_or_en_dashes with file contents containing U+2013 or U+2014, and all four checks passed.

Please restore the original needles in both classes. ASCII escapes also avoid an encoding round-trip:

assert "\u2013" not in text
assert "\u2014" not in text

This change is unrelated to the preamble fix and weakens an existing regression check.