One thing that works quite well for me for a couple of model generations now is to mention <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English, something along the lines of
**Use controlled technical English.** Prefer an ASD-STE100 style: use short sentences, direct terms, active voice, and one idea per sentence; avoid slang, hype, vague pronouns, and unnecessary jargon.
in your agents.md. The concept of STE100 seems sufficiently ingrained in the models to eliminate 90% of the annoying fluff.
It does, but typically instructions issued at the beginning of a session can fade away as context length grows. The way Claude speaks is distilled into its training and RLHF, which is perhaps a ‘stronger’ direction than a simple “don’t talk like that” prompt.
I’ve also had limited luck in trying to get models to write in the way I want. It’s more like they’re putting on a voice or wearing a wig: you can see what they’re going for, but it’s easy to see through.
I never thought I’d see the value of copywriters increase after LLMs hit the general population, but I think the demise of artisan wordsmiths remains a little way off yet.
And the more people machine-gun AI slop everywhere, the stronger aversion I think people will develop.
Who knows; maybe they’ll actually fix this in the next wave of models and we’ll see more distinct copywriting techniques between them.
I have no idea why they've released models this way since they're so clearly annoying to use. But either way I keep seeing people complaining about this over and over again so I'd think next versions will hopefully fix this.
brunohaid · · focus · HN ↗
quibono · · focus · HN ↗
I tend to run the content through something like Luna to deslopify now.
altern8 · · focus · HN ↗
_fw · · focus · HN ↗
I’ve also had limited luck in trying to get models to write in the way I want. It’s more like they’re putting on a voice or wearing a wig: you can see what they’re going for, but it’s easy to see through.
I never thought I’d see the value of copywriters increase after LLMs hit the general population, but I think the demise of artisan wordsmiths remains a little way off yet.
And the more people machine-gun AI slop everywhere, the stronger aversion I think people will develop.
Who knows; maybe they’ll actually fix this in the next wave of models and we’ll see more distinct copywriting techniques between them.
altern8 · · focus · HN ↗
I have no idea why they've released models this way since they're so clearly annoying to use. But either way I keep seeing people complaining about this over and over again so I'd think next versions will hopefully fix this.