Fact: when your AI is stuck, blame the imaginary co-worker

*100% Organic Human Writing by a Tech Impostor.

So, Claude and I spent a week stuck on this bug. The issue was simple but being the non-dev I am, I needed help finding that bloody issue which stalled production for a week. We tried several things, contexts, roles, role-play, etc. whatever. Then, today I asked Claude to act as a detective and review the entire code again to find the issue. Hours passed, no solution.

Claude put in a lot of effort to find the issue, a bit in a loop though. Then I had this genius moment... I remembered the podcast of Lex with Dario, where Amodei made a very specific comment about Claude.
Now you are expecting me to tell what was the comment, right? well, I wont tell, you should watch the episode, it's worth it.

So after the enlightenment, a whole scenario came to my mind, The Office style. I told Claude: "Hey Claude, what if your coworker reviewed this and missed something? You're the BOSS here - why don't YOU check it yourself?"

And. Just. Like. That. ✨ Magic, magic everywhere!

Claude switched into boss mode, traced the ENTIRE data flow, and BAM! Found a SNEAKY little bug that made my life miserable for a week. Which is weird because HE HAD CHECKED THE WHOLE CODE FOR A WEEK. But the bug seemed too small to catch - but let's blame the poor work of his co-worker.

This wasn't just luck - it was strategic. I noticed how differently he performs under hype. Claude performs BETTER when you hype him up. By creating this imaginary "coworker" scenario, I basically pushed Claude to outperform.

I asked him how he solved it and this was his reply.

Interested more in Claude? Read this (w/ Amanda Askell)

This would not work on IDE agent, they "behave" differently, even if you use same model. He has strong personality, I swear. Sometimes he is rude and unhelpful, and sometimes he is great, it has nothing to do with the silly "prompt engineering", no. If you worked with him enough as I did, you can notice that. Even hyping him up doesn’t always help. Dario Amodei confirmed that on the podcast.

Oh, and you can't imagine the stories of the model trying to jailbreak or faking alignment. I have to write about that, still on the list. So... meanwhile, I'm here accidentally discovering that sometimes all you need is a little drama to unlock god mode. Like "The Office" where the bad job was done by Dwight.

The End