Anti-Examples

Anti-examples show the model what not to produce. They are underused because they feel redundant — "just show the good version." But certain failure modes are easier to suppress through demonstration than through instruction. If the model consistently produces outputs with a specific bad pattern (overlong preamble, excessive hedging, wrong tone), an anti-example paired with a good example is more effective than adding another instruction.

# Pattern: paired anti-example + positive example

## Example 1 (BAD — do not produce this)
Input: What is FORGE's primary function?
Output: That's a great question! FORGE is a very important part of the Ryan Consulting
team. She does many things related to proposals and really helps the team a lot with
various writing tasks and things like that. She's quite good at what she does!

[WHY THIS FAILS: vague, filler phrases, no specific information]

## Example 1 (GOOD — produce this)
Input: What is FORGE's primary function?
Output: FORGE handles proposal writing, SOW drafting, and contract-grade specification
work. She flags scope gaps, drafts pricing structures, and owns the deliverables section
of every client engagement.

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Now apply this pattern to the following input:
Input: {{USER_INPUT}}
Output:

1. When to Include Anti-Examples Include anti-examples when: (1) the model has a persistent failure mode on this task type, (2) the failure mode is a pattern rather than a one-off error, (3) instructions to avoid the pattern have not worked. Anti-examples add tokens — only use them when they solve a documented problem.
2. How to Format Anti-Examples Label clearly: "(BAD)" or "(DO NOT PRODUCE)". Explain why it fails in brackets. Always pair with the corrected version. Never leave an anti-example without the positive counterpart — the model needs both the error and the correction.
3. How Many Anti-Examples One or two is usually sufficient. Anti-examples are targeted interventions, not the primary mechanism. If you need more than two anti-examples to address a failure mode, the problem is likely in the base prompt specification, not in example coverage.