Anti-Patterns — "Be Helpful," "Think Carefully," "Take Your Time"

Phrases that feel like instructions but aren't

Some sentences look like guidance and don't change behavior — they just spend tokens.

"Be helpful." The model is already trying to be helpful. This adds nothing, and worse, it pushes toward generic, hedge-y answers.
"Think carefully." On a non-reasoning model, this prompts a chain-of-thought that you're not capturing. On a reasoning model, the model is already thinking; you've just told it to think more, costing tokens.
"Take your time." The model has no time. This is anthropomorphism that produces longer prose without higher quality.
"You are an expert." Sometimes useful for tone, but not for accuracy. See the persona lesson.
"Do not hallucinate." Hallucination is not a switch. The model can't comply by trying harder; you need boundary conditions and grounding.

What to do instead

Replace each anti-pattern with a positive specification of the behavior you actually want. "Think carefully" → "Show your reasoning in <thinking> tags before answering." "Be helpful" → "Open with the actionable next step." "Do not hallucinate" → "Cite each claim with a source from <docs>; if no source exists, say so."

Code

Anti-pattern → replacement·markdown

# Anti-pattern
Be helpful. Think carefully. Take your time. Do not hallucinate.

# Replacement
Open with the actionable next step.
Show reasoning in <thinking> tags before the answer (or use extended thinking).
Cite each factual claim with a source from <docs>; if no source supports a claim, prepend "Unverified:".

Anti-Patterns — "Be Helpful," "Think Carefully," "Take Your Time"

Phrases that feel like instructions but aren't

What to do instead

Code

External links

Exercise

Progress

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