Re:Why agents are bad pair programmers
by avandekleut on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @02:49PM
(#44240041)
Ive found similar behaviour with stopping at linting errors. I wonder if my instructions are conflicting with the agent system prompt.
System prompts themselves have many contradictions. I remember hearing an Anthropic engineer (possibly Lex Fridman's interview with Amanda Askell) talking about using exaggerated language like "NEVER" just to steer Claude to rarely do something.
that doesn't work ( atleast not anymore)
So it behaves just like a person.
thats why we replaced people with machines . so we can have some predictability.
Keyword: Some
humans don't ignore an instruction 4 times out of 10 unless they have a reason to do it on purpose.
I congratulate you in that you only work with humans that never misunderstand, never forget a step in a long process they think they know by heart etc.
I guess you also think that we should get rid of checklists for pilots because they would never ignore an instruction they were clearly given during training except on purpose?
> I guess you also think that we should get rid of checklists for pilots because they would never ignore an instruction they were clearly given during training except on purpose?
Pilots ignore items in checklist 4 times out of 10? wtf
Forget about overall goal. I have this simple instruction that i send on every request
"stop after every failing unit test and discuss implementation with me before writing source code "
but it only does that about 7 times out of 10. Other times it just proceeds with implementation anyways.