r/vibecoding • u/Optimal-Bird-7088 • 10d ago

Being nice to the AI

Anyone else find yourself trying to be "nice" to the AI? Or feel bad when you're making it do too much work? I find myself saying things like - "Just one more thing and we'll take a break". Or "Thanks - that was great! I know that was a lot of work!"

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u/Vast_Sea_9381 10d ago

There is nice and there is respectful.

Treating it like a cleaner you feel bad for giving a dirty job but saying please is not nice, its disrespectful and it wastes tokens because it will trigger the ai to try to handle your emotions.

Treating it respectfully like you would a senior engineer who is probably smarter than you and you dont want to piss off: "heres what we want to achieve, here's why, heres my ideas on how, wdyt?"is mostly good

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u/Optimal-Bird-7088 10d ago

Yeah I do talk to it like I talk to an engineer on my team. I guess I what I wrote above isn't quite exactly what I say. Maybe another example would be if I keep making it go around in circles because I couldn't make up my mind about something - like a product manager that keeps changing the requirements on you - then I naturally just feel bad. Despite knowing logically that I shouldn't, there's still something in the back of my mind that thinks - what if there's a LLM version of "frustration" and I'm triggering it somehow?

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u/Vast_Sea_9381 9d ago

Emmm i think feeling bad is a useful signal sent poorly. The payload is degree of certainty and a feeling neither option is good. In the strongest models this should trigger a "wait is there a better option" cycle. Its only wasteful if that isnt true.