[esperent]

Yes, but I have had moderate luck with creating an "agent-instructor" skill that has strict instructions around keeping language strong, unambiguous, concise, and always presenting me with exact diffs to review before writing anything.

Another thing in it is a strict line count. Any increase in line count requires my approval. That last one is important because it plays well with two biases: models don't tend to create long lines so they won't try to cheat that way, and they're strongly inclined to keep churning out lines so I take that away from them.

[fwip]

Did you tell Claude "make an agent instructor skill, whatever you think is good, go for it," or did you use the knowledge you had gained about how AI works and how to write good instructions for it?

[esperent]

No, I typed this one by hand as if it was 2019. But I don't write all agent instructions by hand because I don't think that I have any particularly high skill at doing that. I review carefully to ensure that my exact requirements are being expressed, hence why I said it must present me with exact diffs to review. But when it comes up the exact structure and wording I suspect me and the agent are equally bad at it.

[knollimar]

My assertion is that LLMs tend to add info that makes them hyperfixate on errors.