alt Hacker Newsadding a scratch space for an llm to fill up and then ‘review’ (no better term for this) and using it to drive the final output isn’t new and it isn’t more than good prompting
adding a scratch space for an llm to fill up and then ‘review’ (no better term for this) and using it to drive the final output isn’t new and it isn’t more than good prompting
Totally fair. I'm not claiming to have invented the concept of a 'scratchpad' or Chain-of-Thought. In that sense, yes, it is 'just' prompt engineering.
But the distinction is in the architecture of that scratchpad.
Most CoT prompts are linear ('Let's think step by step'). This protocol is adversarial. It uses the scratchpad to simulate a split where the model must actively reject its own first draft (which is usually sycophantic) before outputting the final response.
It’s less about a new mechanism and more about applying a specific cognitive structure to solve a specific problem (Sycophancy/Slop). If 'good prompting' can make a base model stop hallucinating just to please the user, I'll call it a win.