One Example Had Too Much Power
While writing a prompt for the bot that drafts card news titles, I kindly added a single example: 「Like this: 3 minutes every morning became 5 seconds」. I ran it ten times, and nine of the results followed the same 「X became Y」 structure, with similar-sized numbers too. The bot treated my example not as a reference but as the template for the right answer.
A Small Experiment
Same prompt, only the example condition changed, ten runs each.
| Condition | Runs matching the example's structure |
|---|---|
| 0 examples | 2 |
| 1 example | 9 |
| 3 examples (different structures) | 3 |
Removing the example entirely reduced the copying, but title lengths became uneven and many results felt flat. So I went up to three examples and deliberately chose different structures: a question, a failure story, and a number.
The One Line I Use Now
Examples are for reference only. Also try structures different from the three below.
That one line plus three examples that do not resemble each other was enough. Whether it ran on the Windows device or the Mac mini, the results were similar.
Takeaways
• Give only one example and it becomes the answer.
• Give several, and pick ones that look different from each other.
• Say 「do not copy this」 clearly in a single line.
Bots follow instructions very diligently, so they also diligently copy the example we dropped in without thinking. If today's prompt has just one example, try finding two more to add.