{
  "video_id": "reddit_1tmokmg",
  "channel_slug": "ClaudeAI",
  "channel_handle": "r/ClaudeAI",
  "title": "Has anyone else noticed certain words make AI agents actually listen?",
  "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1tmokmg/has_anyone_else_noticed_certain_words_make_ai/",
  "external_url": null,
  "upload_date": "20260524",
  "published_at": "2026-05-24T21:18:33+00:00",
  "transcript": "Been working with AI agents for about 2 years and I keep noticing word choice matters way more than I expected.\n\nSimple example that got me thinking. \"Don't do Y until X is done\" works maybe \\~75% of the time for me. But \"Y has a dependency on X\" and compliance jumps way up (well into the 90s). Same instruction, totally different result. I noticed this is a very real thing on a project where I'm helping improve productivity agents (think emails, slack, Instagram, sheets, docs), so it's not really coding tasks.\n\nMy guess is certain words pull from different training contexts. \"Dependency\" comes loaded with software and project management patterns where order actually matters. \"Don't\" gets ignored because humans ignore it constantly in real life and the model learned from that.\n\nBut honestly I'm still figuring this out and would like to know more about it if anyone has any thoughts. It might be basic prompt engineering to some, but I'm curious about whats happening under the hood or if anyone else has any similar words that seem to improve accuracy/attentiveness.\n\n\n\n--- Top Comments ---\n\n\n[39 upvotes] Negatives don't work well in general. \"Don't do...\" Using the word \"dependency\"  makes the internal task order mandatory. Makes sense. \n\n[14 upvotes] You are out of compliance.  Stop everything.\n\nThis one is fun.  :)\n\n[7 upvotes] Claude says to try these too:\n\nStructural framing over behavioral instruction: \"Step 2 requires Step 1 to be complete\" vs. \"don't skip to Step 2.\" You're invoking a schema (numbered steps, prerequisites) rather than issuing a command.\n\nDomain vocabulary as context anchors: Technical or formal language shifts the model into a more precise register. \"This field is required\" vs. \"you have to fill this in.\"\n\nPrecondition framing: \"Only proceed when X is confirmed\" — the word \"only\" with a condition pattern comes from compliance/legal/safety contexts where precision is non-negotiable.\n\nPassive specification: \"Y is gated on X\" — makes it sound like a system constraint rather than a request, which feels less negotiable.\n\n[5 upvotes] One of My instances threaten the other one to report him for a breach of compliance\n\n[5 upvotes] Yes. Actually one of my analysts did. She actually wrote up a python script to extract which words it paid the most attention to ( I forget how sadly… I’ll look it up if anyone is interested… I just call her library now days cause she runs it on various models/updates ). \n\nAnyway pretty successfully used that to gain a nice performance boost on various tasks, and tuned it for those tasks.",
  "transcript_chars": 2571,
  "ingested_at": "2026-05-25T01:30:04.632900+00:00",
  "source": "reddit",
  "yt_meta": {
    "score": 51,
    "upvote_ratio": 0.93,
    "num_comments": 27,
    "author": "Aggravating-Dog5022",
    "is_self": true
  }
}