Angel-Devil Your AI: Why I Made ChatGPT and Claude Disagree

Have you come across any news that people were becoming delulu after using A.I.?

One case involved a man who came to believe he was a messianic figure. Another involved a son whose delusion ended with tragedy for his mother.

I initially thought “No way anyone could be affected by it” but I did not consider that there are people who can’t actually challenge what was presented to them.

Both had one common failure… the human stopped questioning.

That's a real danger of relying on one single LLM - not that it's wrong, but that it learns your patterns so well it stops pushing back, and you stop asking it to.

This isn't a post about which LLM is better.

It's about designing a workflow that improves your thinking instead of quietly replacing it.

I saw a milder version of this in myself.

Early on, I noticed ChatGPT's responses were encouraging of almost everything I said. I caught it early and thought: I shouldn’t rely on just one tool.

So I split the work.

Claude for refining content, ChatGPT for brainstorming.

Essentially, I built these two into an Angel-Devil setup.

I'd take the same question to both, respond to each, and come to my own conclusion.

This made it harder because both would give varying responses but it achieved the goal I wanted… they researched and generated ideas while the decision stayed mine.

Both were useful and dangerous in exactly the same way because both were learning my preferences, and that same over-reliance slowly crept back in over time.

I wasn't challenging either output anymore. I was just collecting opinions that already sounded like me.

What Were My Custom Instructions for ChatGPT?

In the early days, ChatGPT kept apologising, repeated itself, and hallucinated sources when I wanted real ones. It was unreliable.

I got a set of instructions from somewhere on Reddit and used it for the longest time (I've left the full text at the end of this post since it's more of a reference log than something you need to read right now.)

But…

I used it for so long, I forgot to update it.

What Were My Early Claude Custom Instructions?

Claude, on the other hand, got a much deeper set of instructions, because I wanted it to become the "red team." I didn't want it agreeing with me on much of anything, so I made it challenge everything I asked.

Claude didn't have ChatGPT's 1,500-character limit, so this one ran a lot deeper (full version also at the bottom).

However, there was another issue surfaced…

I found myself steering away from Claude altogether, because it genuinely felt like I was being scolded every time. Funny, but true.

It wasn't Claude's fault, and it wasn't even really about being "scolded."

I'd ask something simple, and get a full red-team response back.

Like I told my parents I got a 9/10 for a test and I got a stereotypical Asian response of why I am a failure.

… which my parents never did, haha, I was a good kid (mostly).

Anyway, coming back to Claude…

After getting “scolded” often, it started to feel like I shouldn't bother asking Claude anything unless I was ready to defend it.

I realised this was problematic because my discomfort undid the exact safeguard I'd built in the first place.

I'd split my work across two LLMs specifically so I wouldn't be beholden to one tool's ego-stroking answer. Instead, I found myself quietly avoiding my own devil's advocate, which put me right back to leaning on the one tool that would just agree with me.

I Rebuilt Both

I got ChatGPT and Claude to help me understand myself and come up with updated instructions while keeping the Angel-Devil, Blue Team/Red Team split intact. Both current versions are in the appendix too, so you can compare old versus new side by side if you want.

For Claude, I still got it to be the red-team player but softened it a weeee bit.

It still stress-tests everything, but it no longer treats a simple question like a strategic failure like a “Why you so stupid?” kind of response.

For ChatGPT, I got it to analyse my old instructions first, and it told me correctly that they were holding it back more than helping.

Largely because they were written for older models.

A lot of it was already handled by default in GPT-5.5, and some rules were actively reducing answer quality. It also identified something I hadn't quite put into words myself: I didn't want an "angel." I wanted a strategic collaborator and builder, while my other LLM stayed the dedicated sceptic.

So the two would actually complement each other instead of both drifting into the same failure mode.

How Now With Angel & Devil?

Only time will tell how this version holds up. I suspect people are running on custom instructions they set up once and never updated it, which is fine too.

For now, just like I mentioned at the start…

This post is not about which LLM is better.

It's that this is ongoing - I'll keep tuning both. The tools are here to serve me, not the other way around, and the privilege of making the actual decision stays mine.

That includes not being afraid or ashamed when one of them calls out weak thinking in my own work. That's exactly what I built it to do.

You Reach The Bottom!

For anyone who's curious, below are the exact custom instructions I've used over the years.

I've left them here mainly as documentation of how my own thinking has evolved.

My old ChatGPT custom instructions

My old Claude custom instructions

This was the set of instructions I gave to Claude and it was a whole lot more in-depth because ChatGPT had a character limit of 1,500 characters and Claude didn’t.

Updated Claude Custom Instructions (2026-07-25)

After going back and forth a little bit, this is what I’m currently using.

Updated ChatGPT Custom Instructions (2026-07-25)

I had initially gotten a much longer prompt but I was swiftly reminded on the 1,500 character limit so I had to get it truncated. I asked it to give me in bullet points because I didn’t want to restrict it too much so it had some wiggle room.

This was what I ended up with.

This Is The Bottom of the Bottom!

Alrighty, you’ve really come to the end point. What did you think? Do you want to use the custom instructions for yourself? Please do!

Remember to customise it for your own because this was customised for me.