Over-instruction

An engineering failure mode in which a prompt accumulates redundant, overlapping, or conflicting instructions until the model must arbitrate rules that should have been placed in a clear hierarchy. The excess consumes context, obscures the objective, and creates more combinations of noncompliance. The term is informal and has no standardized threshold.

Reliable control comes from explicit priority, deduplication, and separation between linguistic guidance and deterministic enforcement. Schemas, authorization, and operational limits belong in code when they must be guaranteed. If every exception requires another paragraph in the prompt, the system boundary is probably poorly designed.