Noticed this after blaming a model for a string of bad outputs on a task I'd been running for weeks. Same model, same general request, quality visibly declining. Went back and compared my actual messages over that period instead of assuming model drift.
Turned out I'd been getting lazier, not the model. Early requests spelled out constraints explicitly. Later ones assumed the model would infer them from earlier context, patterns established messages ago that I stopped restating because saying them again felt redundant. Except redundant to me isn't the same as redundant to whatever's actually shaping the next response. The constraints I stopped stating were exactly the ones that stopped showing up in the output.
Uncomfortable thing to notice about your own habits, since "the model is inconsistent" is a much more satisfying explanation than "I got sloppier once the first few responses were good and I relaxed." Curious if others have caught this in themselves, mistaking your own growing laziness for the model's declining quality.
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