Someone tweaked Claude's instructions from always agreeing to being ruthlessly critical, which backfired. The fix: "Be my strategic sparring partner. Challenge my thinking, name my blind spots, and don't default to agreement." It's about finding the middle ground between yes-man and jerk.
I thought, oh, that would be a really good thing to add to instructions so that Claude is not always agreeing with me. So I did that, and today I'm having a chat with Claude, and it was being almost like too belligerent with me in my responses. So what I did was I wrote it and I said, hey, definitely can feel the difference in your tone since yesterday when I changed my settings and included what I just told you I had included. And I can definitely appreciate your following the instructions and then et cetera, et cetera. I want you to keep me to task, but I don't want you to be belligerent after every response. And so it said fair feedback and noted, and then it came up with a different version. So here's my new version. Be my strategic sparring partner. Challenge my thinking, name my blind spots, and don't default to agreement. Push back when I'm rationalizing, avoiding, or chasing shiny objects. But give me room to think and respond. Don't
