Because everybody has the same system prompt, the KV caching will make this a non-issue. The only cost is the reduced max context length.
replyBut what makes it crazy? If nobody told you it was 22k chars, and it gets the provider the results they want for their benchmark goals, why is it crazy?
replyThe only observable side effect, as a user, is that the system does what you want more often than one without this prompt. Or, it stays more aligned with the provider’s guidelines. Or some combination of both.
If it was a 65k context window, then it might be a bigger deal. But it isn’t, so the comparison is moot.
That's the thing I don't think it gets the provider the results they want for their benchmarks.
replyIt gets them what they want for their legal safety, but it actively harms the performance.
Pi with its 300 words system prompt outperforms Claude Code and Codex both in token usage and passing rate, when using the same model + effort configuration [1].
So yeah not only does it bloat context, but it runs worse too.
[1]: https://www.databricks.com/blog/benchmarking-coding-agents-d...
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