Comment by efitz
16 days ago
To an LLM, answering “no” and changing the mode of the chat window are discrete events that are not necessarily related.
Many coding agents interpret mode changes as expressions of intent; Cline, for example, does not even ask, the only approval workflow is changing from plan mode to execute mode.
So while this is definitely both humorous and annoying, and potentially hazardous based on your workflow, I don’t completely blame the agent because from its point of view, the user gave it mixed signals.
Yeah but why should I care? That’s not how consent works. A million yesses and a single no still evaluates to a hard no.
The point is that if the harness’ workflow gives contradictory and confusing instructions to the model, it’s a harness issue, not necessarily a model issue.
First it was a model issue, then it was a prompting issue, then it was a context issue, then it was an agent issue, now it's a harness issue. AI advocates keep accusing AI skeptics of moving goalposts. But it seems like every 3-6 months another goalpost is added.
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