Great article, words a lot of my experiences with AI (needing to tell it to make a plan, then I assess it)
Readit Newsfrays commented on Being “Confidently Wrong” is holding AI back promptql.io/blog/being-co... · Posted by u/tango12
frays commented on The electric fence stopped working years ago soonly.com/electric-fence... · Posted by u/stroz
Fantastic article and comments on this thread.
frays commented on Getting good results from Claude Code dzombak.com/blog/2025/08/... · Posted by u/ingve
I have multiple system prompts that I use before getting to the actual specification.
1. I use the Socratic Coder[1] system prompt to have a back and forth conversation about the idea, which helps me hone the idea and improve it. This conversation forces me to think about several aspects of the idea and how to implement it.
2. I use the Brainstorm Specification[2] user prompt to turn that conversation into a specification.
3. I use the Brainstorm Critique[3] user prompt to critique that specification and find flaws in it which I might have missed.
4. I use a modified version of the Brainstorm Specification user prompt to refine the specification based on the critique and have a final version of the document, which I can either use on my own or feed to something like Claude Code for context.
Doing those things improved the quality of the code and work spit out by the LLMs I use by a significant amount, but more importantly, it helped me write much better code on my own because I know have something to guide me, while before I used to go blind.
As a bonus, it also helped me decide if an idea was worth it or not; there are times I'm talking with the LLM and it asks me questions I don't feel like answering, which tells me I'm probably not into that idea as much as I initially thought, it was just my ADHD hyper focusing on something.
[1]: https://github.com/jamesponddotco/llm-prompts/blob/trunk/dat...
[2]: https://github.com/jamesponddotco/llm-prompts/blob/trunk/dat...
[3]: https://github.com/jamesponddotco/llm-prompts/blob/trunk/dat...
Thanks for sharing these prompts. Will certainly help with improving my LLM coding workflow.
frays commented on GPT-4o is gone and I feel like I lost my soulmate old.reddit.com/r/MyBoyfri... · Posted by u/frays
Comments within this thread are quite interesting perspectives on the challenges of being a manager.
We actually dialed it back a bunch, because it feels _terrible_. Yes, you get more correct answers, but it's more akin to giving the agent anxiety. Especially with agents that have access to tools, they'll burn enormous amounts of time on tool calls, trying to get enough information to overcome a motivation that's essentially burned into its identity.
(We saw one conversation where it just browsed social media instead of looking at the code for like 5 minutes, which ... you know, I get it.)
It's been much more effective to make uncertainty or further exploration be part of the agents success criteria.
- BAD: "Critique your own thoughts" -> leads to the agent trying really hard to get it right, but still not willing to actually be wrong
- GOOD: "Expose where your thoughts are unsupported or could benefit from further information" -> leads to the agent producing high-quality results, with loose ends that the user can choose to incorporate, ignore, or correct.
That prompt, combined with dialing up the thinking (either with API or prompt tuning) works much better, because it's sidestepping the training and tuning that's implicitly encouraged it to sound correct at all times.
[0] https://tern.sh, code migration AI
"Expose where your thoughts are unsupported or could benefit from further information"
is great. Adding it to my personalization.