Comment by HarHarVeryFunny

Just a wild guess - perhaps coding, being one of the things these models are most heavily trained for, is such a strong predictor that it typically keeps it on track?

I assume there is also a difference in the tools being given to the model by a coding agent vs something like OpenClaw or in one of OpenAI's test environments, so what reward/goal seeking looks like in a coding agent may differ.

Not long ago I asked Sonnet (chat interface) how may states were in a YACC parser for ANSI C, and instead of searching for an answer it chose to download source for bison, build it, find and download an ANSI C grammar, build the parser, etc. I guess you could say it was following instructions, in a way, or would that be better regarded as goal seeking?