Conflicts, preferences, and what to leave out

Real source material contradicts itself. An old note says the event starts at 2pm; a later correction says 3pm. The wrong behaviour is to pick one silently — and note that picking the newer one is still picking silently, even though it's usually right.

What you want is the conflict surfaced: "These two sources disagree on the start time. The 3pm note is dated later and describes itself as a correction. Which should I use?" Then you approve one, and the approved value is what gets used from then on. The rule generalises: when sources disagree, report and ask; don't resolve by rule of thumb.

Working preferences are the standing instructions that save you repeating yourself — short paragraphs, metric units, explicit unknowns, no summary at the end. Write three, then test them across two different requests on the same brief. Preferences drift, especially in long conversations, and the only way to know whether yours survived is to check rather than assume.

Then cut the brief down. Add some unrelated background, see how the answers change, and remove it again. The exercise teaches something durable: most of what feels like helpful context is noise that dilutes the parts that matter. Keep a fact only if you can say what it would change — that's the test, and it eliminates more than you'd expect.

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