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Comment on How well do agents use test/verification techniques?parent

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It's well known that CoT needs a narrow problem or several independent narrow problems to perform well. With too broad of a task it often turns into a burden and hurts performance, making it hyperfocus on one thing where a non-reasoning model would just handle everything. I wonder if disabling it would make anything better, but likely not if the model is already trained to do it.

CoT works really well in qwen3.8-flash-next. I think a lot of the problems obversed are literal skill issue: dumping huge system prompts/skills that prime it over some broad scope, when the request is narrow.

The system prompt should be considered a starting point only if you want reusable intelligence and focus. It should not be a grab bag of tools and PR style guides, etc...

Grab your agent and inspect its prompt.

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