You are reviewing a peer’s draft system prompt that contains contradictory instructions: one section says...

The prompt contains mutually incompatible behavioral requirements. The architect should resolve the contradiction explicitly so the model receives one coherent grounding policy. If the application requires source-supported answers, the prompt should prohibit unsupported completion, permit an insufficient-evidence response, and require citations or supporting passages. Adding another priority instruction leaves the underlying conflict in place and creates ambiguity about when speculation is permitted. Increasing temperature makes behavior more variable rather than more correct. Retaining both instructions produces inconsistent outputs across requests and model versions. Anthropic recommends clear, direct, specific prompting and notes that conflicting project instructions can cause Claude to select among them unpredictably. Prompting best practices ; project-instruction troubleshooting