[altmanaltman]

I think the "next step" instruction is more about engagement than cost, basically giving the user some options to continue the chat. I always have had success by ending the prompt with "only reply with nothing else but the answer to the query in a precise way". This usually always works better than telling it to not ask leading questions etc but a straight up expectation of the answer format you need is an instruction that most models can follow imo

[HarHarVeryFunny]

I find that asking Gemini "just the answer, no follow up" etc works at best for one or two conversational turns, sometimes none!

The problem seems to be the way it in effect overweights the system prompt vs user input, so it quickly ignores things like this that conflict with the system prompt.

This is kind of a case of the bitter lesson - the conversational patterns of these models would be much more natural if they just let it learn them, and respond in a context appropriate way, rather than this crude system prompt way of forcing it to respond in the same way always, regardless of input or of how much the user tells it to shut up!