Comment by eterm
1 day ago
I've found it does this in two situations:
Firstly when you've instructed it ( possibly through skills ) not to do something. It'll keep reminding you that it didn't do that. So I might say, "Check out and review this PR, do not make comments on it", and then it'll be keen to point out it hasn't posted comments to the PR.
But more often it happens when it tries one approach, gets itself messed up, and then has to back out that approach, clean up its mess and do something else.
It'll often then spend more time explaining the wrong approach than the right one, which can be frustrating, especially if all its working is buried in the detailed transcripts.
This is a skill I learned as a coffee shop supervisor and youth camp counselor, and now I really practice it on Slack with half-interested product owners.
- Always describe tasks in the positive. (Never describe tasks in the negative.)
- DO guide the user safely. DO NOT use DO NOT because the reader already DID.
- Give guided choices based on your expertise.
- Asking two-or-more questions results in one-or-less answers.
- Conditionals are also questions, so you only get one.
I only use AI agents and tools for work, I don't create them, so I'm not a subject matter expert. Where I've anthropomorphized the tools highlights my own misunderstandings.