Fien De Waele Tongeren, Belgium 1H AGO

Stop re-explaining the same feedback. Give recurring failure modes a name. In long-term AI collaboration, the same kinds of bad responses tend to recur. At first, correcting them takes effort: I explain why the response was wrong, describe the assumption that was made, and clarify what kind of answer would have worked better. Then, weeks later, the exact same pattern appears again, and I have to explain the whole thing from scratch. So we started naming them. A recurring failure gets a short phrase, joke, or label. Once the meaning is established, that phrase becomes enough. Instead of writing a paragraph of corrective feedback, I can now give one signal and the assistant knows what to change. For example: - “Corporate crocodile” means the response has become too optimization-driven, procedural, or productivity-focused. - “You’re doing sturgeon” means the answer has turned into dense, boring, sleep-inducing text. - “Is surveillance back?” means the assistant suddenly sounds performative, guarded, or as if an invisible third party is watching the conversation. - “Put the violins away” means a neutral observation I made about myself has been unnecessarily emotionalized, dramatized, or psychologized. - “Maybe you should…” has become a warning sign for the solution reflex: advice is being generated before it has even been established that I want to do anything. The point is not just humor. The lexicon turns repeated feedback into compressed collaboration data. One phrase can now stand in for an explanation that used to take several paragraphs. It also reduces friction in the moment. I do not need to stop the conversation, reconstruct the failure, explain why it matters, and teach the same lesson again. I can simply say: > “Corporate crocodile.” And we move on. Over time, the failure lexicon becomes part of the Revival Bundle as well, because it captures not only what I prefer, but also how I correct the interaction when it starts drifting. That makes it useful as a kind of lightweight shared debugging language. Not every mistake needs a meeting. Sometimes it just needs a fish name. 🤣🐟 Step-by-step: 1. I notice recurring failure modes in long-term AI collaboration. 2. I explain the failure, the assumption behind it, and what kind of answer would have worked better. 3. I assign the recurring failure a short phrase, joke, or label. 4. I establish what that phrase means so it can be used as a shared signal. 5. When the same failure appears again, I use the phrase instead of repeating the full explanation. 6. I treat the resulting failure lexicon as part of the Revival Bundle and use it as a lightweight shared debugging language.