It's a mirror. Address it like it's a friendly person and it will glaze you; that's the source of much of the sycophancy.

My queries look like the beginning of encyclopedia articles, and my system prompt tells the machine to use that style and tone. It works because it's a continuation engine. I start the article describing what I want to be explained like it's the synopsis at the beginning of the encyclopedia article, and the machine completes the entry.

It doesn't use the first person, and the sycophancy is gone. It also doesn't add cute bullshit, and it helps me avoid LLM psychosis, of which the author of this piece definitely has a mild case.

I'm also tired of seeing claims about productivity improvements from engineers who are self reporting; the METR paper showed those reports are not reliable.