A controlled experiment exploring how Claude and Qwen resolve conflicting instructions across system prompts, user messages, and tool descriptions.
In the first experiment of the series, Where You Put the Instruction Matters More Than What It Says, I asked a simple question:
Does it matter where you place an instruction?
The answer depended entirely on the model.
For Qwen 2.5-Coder 3B, the answer was yes. The same instruction produced dramatically different compliance rates depending on whether it lived in the system prompt, user message (or task prompt), or tool description.
