VideoYour AI is not your friend. Stop chatting with it.
TL;DR Spreading instructions over several messages cut accuracy by 39%. Put everything you already know into message one.
Your AI is not your friend. Stop chatting with it. Microsoft and Salesforce ran 200,000 simulated conversations across 15 models. Complete instructions in one message scored 90/100. The same instructions spread across turns, like a normal chat, scored 65.
Why? The model won't wait. It guesses whatever you haven't said yet, answers early, then defends that guess forever. The proof it's about timing, not words: paste the same pieces into one message and you get 95% of full performance back.
It's not “never ask follow-ups.” It's “never make it guess.” Everything you already know goes into message one.
Sources: Laban et al., ICLR 2026.
