Rule reference · Efficiency

Duplicate instructions

  • duplicate_instruction
  • warning in this example
  • Efficiency
  • stage · Redundancy detection

Fires when: A sentence repeated verbatim.

Verbatim repetition is usually an editing accident, and occasionally a deliberate attempt at emphasis. Either way it is billed on every call and can make the model weight that instruction above the rest.

Remove the copy. If an instruction truly needs emphasis, say why it matters once instead of repeating it.

Example that triggers it

Translate the text below into French. Keep the original formatting. Translate the text below into French.

<text>
{{text}}
</text>

warning 1 sentence repeated verbatim.

Why it matters. Repetition costs tokens on every call and can over-weight one instruction relative to the rest.

Quality 87/100 · 28 tokens · 2 findings

Fixed version

Translate the text below into French. Keep the original formatting.

<text>
{{text}}
</text>

Quality 97/100 (+10) · 21 tokens · 1 findings

Resolved by the fix

  • duplicate_instruction: 1 sentence repeated verbatim.
Open the example in the workspaceOpen the fixed version

Scores, token counts (GPT-4.1 tokenizer), and findings on this page are computed by the engine when the site is built.

How it affects the score

Each finding subtracts a fixed penalty from 100: critical 30, warning 10, info 3. This rule counts against the Efficiency dimension. See the scoring model for the full formula.

  • Filler phrases: Politeness and intensifiers that do not change the task.

Checked in the same pipeline stage

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