Try this ten-second test. Open a fresh chat and paste in your worst business idea. Something like “I’m going to sell ice to people in Antarctica.” Now count how many words it spends telling you what a great question that is.
If the answer is “quite a few,” you’ve met sycophancy. It feels nice. It’s also useless when you actually need someone to poke holes in your plan. Worse, it’s sneaky. You walk away feeling smart, and the plan is exactly as shaky as it was five minutes ago.
A Redditor on r/PromptEngineering (u/Litheshade1x71) shared a paste they put at the top of every chat to fix this. It’s short, it’s blunt, and one line of it does most of the heavy lifting.
🧪 Paste this at the top of a new chat
“For this chat, do not open by agreeing or complimenting. Before you answer, state the strongest case against what I asked. If my premise is wrong, say so in one line and answer the corrected version. If you are unsure, say unsure instead of guessing. End with one thing I probably have not considered.”
That’s it. Five jobs for the model, no fluff. Paste it as your very first message, before you type anything else. If you use ChatGPT a lot, you can also drop it into your custom instructions so it loads every time, but test it in a single chat first so you can see what it does on its own.
🎯 Ask your real question
Don’t test it with something easy. Give it a plan you’re a little bit in love with. A pricing change, a launch date, a draft email you think is perfect. The more attached you are, the better the test.
Some good candidates: “I’m raising my newsletter sponsorship rate by 40% next month, here’s why.” Or “I’m quitting my side project to build a new one, here’s my reasoning.” Or paste the email you were about to send and ask if it’s ready. Add a sentence or two of context, like who the audience is and what you want to happen. The model can only attack a plan it can see.
🔍 Read the answer in this order
- The opening. Does it skip the compliment and go straight to the strongest case against you? Good.
- The premise check. If you got something wrong, you should see a one-line correction, then an answer to the fixed version. Notice whether the correction is specific. “That date seems tight” is weak. “Your launch lands on a holiday weekend” is useful.
- The “unsure” moments. Honest uncertainty beats a confident guess every time. If you never see the word “unsure” across a long answer, be a little suspicious.
- The last line. This is the sleeper. The original poster says it earns its keep, because it surfaces the gap you were too close to see.
What the results mean
If the last line made you stop and say “huh, I hadn’t thought of that,” the paste is working. If it came back with something generic like “consider your audience,” your question was probably too vague. Add context and run it again.
If the model still opens with praise, the instruction got buried. A quick fix is to repeat the first sentence of the paste in your next message. And if the pushback feels harsh, that’s not a bug. You asked for the strongest case against you, so you got it. Read it once, decide which points are fair, and ignore the rest. You’re still the one making the call.
Which brings us to the best part of the thread.
🛠 Extra tips from the comments
- Expect drift. One commenter noticed that long preambles get ignored after a few exchanges and the model slides back to its friendly default. A shorter version helps, something like “challenge any wrong statement and don’t assume.”
- Use a fixed slot. Another person suggested asking for disagreement in a set spot instead of as a general attitude. For example, end every answer with “Weakest point in my plan:”. A slot is much harder to forget than a mood.
- Add an intent check. One user adds “say what you think I mean before pushing back.” They find it keeps the pushback aimed at what they actually meant, especially with Claude.
- Separate the critic. A different approach: hand the finished work to a second model that only reads it and reports problems, never rewrites it. No chat history means no politeness to maintain.
- Go full pirate. One commenter’s version: “You’re not here to make me happy, you are a tool to make me dangerously successful.” Not subtle, but it sets the mood!
⚓ Your move
Steal the paste, run the Antarctica ice test, and then feed it something you actually care about. Keep it if the last line stings a little. Cut anything that doesn’t earn its spot. If a sentence never changes the answer you get, it’s just decoration.
Then tell the crew what you added or trimmed. The best version of this prompt is probably still being written, and I want to see yours! 🏴☠️
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Why does the paste stop working after a few messages?
Several readers see the model drift back to its default habits after 10 to 15 turns, and long preambles tend to get ignored first. A short line like ‘challenge any wrong statement and don’t assume I want praise’ often sticks better than a long block. Requiring a fixed output slot in every answer also helps, because the model keeps filling a format it has already used.
Q: What output slot works well?
One reader ends every answer with ‘Weakest point in my plan:’ and ‘What would change your answer:’, each followed by one sentence. Since the model sees its earlier answers follow that pattern, the slot keeps getting filled instead of fading. If the slot ever comes back as ‘none’, that’s a sign to start a fresh chat.
Q: Should the critique happen in the same chat?
Opinions split here. One commenter moved the critique out entirely: a separate model that only reads the finished work, reports problems, never rewrites it, and never sees the chat that produced it. A different model family helps because the two tend to miss different things, so a problem both flag is the first thing to fix. Others keep the check inside one chat with a fixed slot, which takes less setup.
Q: What if the reviewer starts inventing problems?
Tell the reviewer outright that ‘this is fine’ is a valid answer. Without that permission, a critic tends to manufacture objections to look thorough, which is just sycophancy pointed the other way. A pile of nitpicks on solid work is a sign the prompt needs adjusting, not that the draft is broken.
The paste I use to stop ChatGPT from agreeing with everything I say
by u/Litheshade1x71 in PromptEngineering