http://programmer.ie/tags/system-prompts/ Recent content in System Prompts on Programmer.ie: Modern AI programming Hugo en-us Wed, 23 Sep 2026 05:00:03 +0100 http://programmer.ie/books/context/03-chapter/ Wed, 23 Sep 2026 05:00:03 +0100 http://programmer.ie/books/context/03-chapter/ <p>The mental model most users carry looks like this:</p> <div class="highlight"><pre tabindex="0" style="color:#f8f8f2;background-color:#272822;-moz-tab-size:4;-o-tab-size:4;tab-size:4;"><code class="language-text" data-lang="text"><span style="display:flex;"><span>user </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span> ↓ </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>model </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span> ↓ </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>answer </span></span></code></pre></div><p>A message goes in, intelligence happens, an answer comes out. Everything in the previous chapter says this picture is false, but the previous chapter showed the falsity as accounting tables. This chapter shows it as machinery. Behind a production assistant stands a runtime that assembles a layered stack of instructions, definitions, state, history, and observations, and the user&rsquo;s message arrives near the bottom of that stack, not the top of it.</p>