Rules in settings are often ignored — need better enforcement or clearer limits

Hey, thanks for the detailed report.

This is a known limitation of how rules work right now. Rules are passed to the model as instructions in the system prompt, but models are non-deterministic, so they might ignore constraints, especially negative ones like “don’t do X”. The team is aware of the issue.

The most practical workaround is to rewrite rules in a positive way and explain why. Models follow positive instructions with context much better than plain bans.

Instead of:

“Don’t write documentation, just explain in chat”

Try something like:

“Your role is to explain solutions directly in chat conversation. This is more helpful because the user can ask follow-up questions immediately. When you need to share code changes, propose edits to source files. Never create or modify .md documentation files, always explain findings and solutions as chat messages.”

A couple more tips:

  • Shorter chats are more reliable, in long sessions rules get “forgotten” more often
  • Concrete step-by-step instructions work better than abstract bans

These threads have similar cases and more detailed guidance from the team:

Let me know if rewriting the rules doesn’t improve things.