Your AI Instructions Are Too Long

Most people write their custom instructions as two dense paragraphs. They think more words means more control. They are wrong, and their AI is quietly ignoring half of it.

The fix is to write less.

Paragraphs hide your rules

When you bury your instructions in prose, the important parts get camouflaged. The model has to dig your actual rules out of a wall of connective filler, and some of them do not survive the dig.

Lines get followed. Paragraphs get ignored. A clear list of rules reads like a checklist the model can tick off. A blob of text reads like a suggestion it can interpret creatively (and it will, in the worst possible way).

Six clear lines beat two clever paragraphs. The model is not reading your prose. It is hunting for rules.

The six-line format

Here is the whole thing. Role: who the AI is acting as. Tone: how it should sound. Format: what the output should look like. Constraints: the hard limits. What to escalate: when it should stop and ask you. What not to do: the bright red lines.

Six lines. Each one a single, unmissable instruction. No filler, no throat-clearing, nothing for the model to misread.

Go rewrite your instructions as six lines and watch how much better it listens.