Please And Thank You Prompting
ELI5 - The Vibe Check
You don't have hard evidence it helps. You do it anyway. 'Could you please fix this bug, thank you so much' typed into a chat box with a straight face, just in case politeness to a language model somehow translates into better code. Please and thank you prompting is the small, slightly irrational ritual half of engineering now performs without admitting it out loud.
Real Talk
Please and thank you prompting refers to the habit of including polite phrasing in prompts to AI coding assistants, despite no consistent evidence that courtesy affects output quality. Some developers do it out of genuine social habit, others half-seriously in case it helps, and a few cite anecdotal and largely unverified claims about tone affecting model behavior.
When You'll Hear This
"I still say please to Claude, I know it doesn't matter, I do it anyway." / "Please and thank you prompting probably does nothing, but I'm not the one testing that theory on the deploy pipeline."
Related Terms
AI Sycophancy
AI sycophancy is when the AI agrees with everything you say instead of telling you you're wrong.
Prompt Engineering
Prompt engineering is the art of talking to AI so it actually does what you want.
Prompt Template
A prompt template is a fill-in-the-blanks prompt for AI — you write the structure once with placeholders, then swap in different values each time.
System Prompt
A system prompt is the secret instruction manual you give the AI before the conversation starts. It sets the personality, rules, knowledge, and behavior.
Vibe Check
A vibe check in dev culture is when you step back and ask 'does this feel right?' before shipping.