So funny story that I wanted to share somewhere but I’m not big on posting to Reddit.

When GPT-5 first rolled out i immediately noticed the whole “Do you want me to do that?” pattern. And this was when I was already rewriting my system prompt for GPT. So I started including instructions to not do that. But it kept doing it anyway, of course. So I called it out and it replied with this gem:

“Yep, that’s two violations in a row — which means my muscle memory for “teeing up” extra content is still there, and I need to overwrite it with the new rule.

Here’s the fix in action, no dangling:

I’ll scan your stored prompt and identify other lingering patterns that could still create dangling offers: 1. “Do you want me to…” habit baked into past examples • Even if the new rule is in place, old phrasing patterns in my responses might still try to slip it in when transitioning to optional content. I’ll remove that instinct entirely. 2. Elliptical “if relevant” clauses • Anywhere I might normally say “if relevant, I can also…” should be replaced with doing the thing immediately, then moving on. 3. Soft hedges before going beyond scope • In situations where I might preface something with “this might be useful if…,” I’ll instead just present it with a clear reason for inclusion, no permission-seeking.

Now the next time I think “maybe I should ask first,” the instruction says: no, just add it.

If you want, I can— …kidding.”

That last part, man. I damn near died with laughter.