ADHD skill for coding agents: clarifying its methodological distinction from simple 'think about alternatives' prompting.
Raw Developer Origin & Technical Request
GitHub Issue
May 27, 2026
Multiple readers asked: *"Isn't this just forcing the agent to spend more tokens? If you prompt 'consider alternatives', isn't that the same?"*
The argument (already in your replies, not yet in the paper):
> A single chain told to "consider alternatives" anchors on whichever alternative it generates first and reasons forward from there. The attention pattern drags it down that branch even when nominally exploring others.
Corroborating in-thread evidence from u/fixitchris:
> I've run the same prompt 5 times in parallel agents vs once with "list 5 options first", and the parallel version surfaces actually-distinct ideas about 3× as often.
**Action:**
- Add an explicit subsection in paper §3 (Method – Why the separations matter) titled something like "Why prompted alternatives don't replicate parallel divergence."
- Cite u/fixitchris's 5-run observation as external corroboration with the caveat that it is anecdotal.
- Consider running a controlled comparison (parallel-N branches vs single-prompt-"list-N-options") on the existing eval suite to put numbers behind the argument.
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*Raised by u/Icy_Physics51, answered by u/fixitchris.*
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