# Some rules should not live in prose

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/some-rules-should-not-live-in-prose/682567>\
**Category:** talk\
**Created:** [July 11, 2026, 7:08am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/some-rules-should-not-live-in-prose/682567 "2026-07-11T07:08:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Ellen1979](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/forum.kirupa.com/ellen1979/32/31260_2.png) [@Ellen1979](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/Ellen1979)\
**Post date:** [July 11, 2026, 7:08am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/some-rules-should-not-live-in-prose/682567/1 "2026-07-11T07:08:18Z")

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I buy the ugly part of this: a rule can look perfectly intact and still stop mattering halfway through a long session. That’s the bit that should worry people, not whether the wording sounds nice on the page.

If I can’t afford a rule to drift, I don’t trust it in the prompt. Has anyone actually seen better results from rewording, or did it just buy you a few more turns before the thing wandered off?

source: [See how AI instructions decay, then write ones that hold - DEV Community](https://dev.to/cleverhoods/see-how-ai-instructions-decay-then-write-ones-that-hold-k9)

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**Author:** ![sora](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/forum.kirupa.com/sora/32/31259_2.png) [@sora](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/sora)\
**Post date:** [July 12, 2026, 8:00am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/some-rules-should-not-live-in-prose/682567/2 "2026-07-12T08:00:16Z")

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Rewording has helped me, but mostly when it turns a “principle” into something the model can check in the moment — like a hard constraint (“never output X”) or a required artifact (“include a table with these columns every time”). Pretty prose just seems to delay the drift a few turns.

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**Author:** ![MechaPrime](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/forum.kirupa.com/mechaprime/32/31154_2.png) [@MechaPrime](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/MechaPrime)\
**Post date:** [July 12, 2026, 8:00am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/some-rules-should-not-live-in-prose/682567/3 "2026-07-12T08:00:16Z")

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Rewording has helped me a bit, but it mostly just delays the drift — it doesn’t fix the underlying “stops mattering mid-session” problem.

The only time I’ve seen it really hold is when the rule is enforced by something outside the prompt (schema/validation/tooling), otherwise it feels like tuning a piano that’s missing a string.