Chris Pirillo

chrispirillo.bsky.social

20 October 2026 05:42

Today Claude showed me that its main instruction file had ballooned to 3,550 words before touching any work in our studio.

Chris Pirillo

chrispirillo.bsky.social

20 October 2026 05:42

#Apple says the #iPhone Duo is “revolutionary.” The only thing it’s revolutionizing is Apple’s bottom line, and the January ship dates are doing the marketing. Did you get one?

Chris Pirillo

chrispirillo.bsky.social

20 October 2026 05:42

5. Test the check with a fake error. We planted a duplicate sentence on purpose to confirm the check blocked it. Pruning prompt files buys you an afternoon. Automate the guardrail.

Chris Pirillo

chrispirillo.bsky.social

20 October 2026 05:42

3. Block duplicate sentences on every update. We added a 29-line script that scans prompt files whenever a change lands. If the same sentence shows up twice, the update fails. 4. Keep agent assignments out of prose. Our script rejects any prompt text naming which AI builds or reviews.

Chris Pirillo

chrispirillo.bsky.social

20 October 2026 05:42

Right after our clean-up, Claude caught our rules duplicated across 2 instruction files, and 2 of the rules had already drifted apart. One rule lived in 3 separate places. Deadlines and issue numbers were even sneaking into the prose instead of our settings file.