Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I'm clearly way too polite to Claude.

Also:

  // Match "continue" only if it's the entire prompt
  if (lowerInput === 'continue') {
    return true
  }
When it runs into an error, I sometimes tell it "Continue", but sometimes I give it some extra information. Or I put a period behind it. That clearly doesn't give the same behaviour.
 help



I always type "please continue". I guess being polite is not a good idea.

Always seems strange to me that people say "please" and "thank you" to LLMs.

It seems strange to you? It's natural to how I write - intentionally avoiding politeness would be weirder to me.

But aside from that, an LLM is only a roleplayer. Treat it like an idiot that makes mistakes and it will act like one. Treat it like a coworker who you respect and it will act like one, and it will find better results.

Obviously nothing about how they act is set in stone but as a general rule this seems to me to be both wise and, in my experience, true as well.


I think if you treat it like a coworker who you respect, it will speak to you like a coworker who respects you, but will still make some idiotic mistakes...

It actually works really well if you suck up to the AI.

"Please do x"

"Thank you, that works great! Please do y now."

"You're so smart!"

lol. It really works though! At least in my experience, Claude gets almost hostile or "annoyed" when I'm not nice enough to it. And I swear it purposefully acts like a "malicious genie" when I'm not nice enough. "It works, exactly like you requested, but what you requested is stupid. Let me show you how stupid you are."

But, when I'm nice, it is way more open, like "Are you sure you really want to do X? You probably want X+Y."


What really works? Sycophancy? I think that is a bug, not a feature.

The only time that function is used in the code is to log it.

    logEvent('tengu_input_prompt', { isNegative, isKeepGoing })

“Go on” works fine too

Makes me wonder what happens once flagged behind the api.



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: