Chapter

Port these habits to any model, so this outlasts today's models (Opus / GPT / Gemini)

Frontier models are converging on the same traits — so these habits transfer even as the model underneath changes. Four traits, and the habit each one rewards:

• They follow instructions literally. Say what you want, not what to avoid — specificity and positive framing pay off on every model → Tier 1.
• They over-engineer when left unconstrained. Give them room and they gold-plate, so bound the scope and the edit surface → Tier 1 (Tip 1.11).
• They run longer on their own — and can check their own work. The payoff is in the bar you set: an executable Definition of Done and a loop that proves it → Tier 4.
• Their context windows keep growing. More room is not license to dump more in — feed high signal and manage what's in context → Tier 3.

The mechanisms here — /effort, ultracode, dynamic workflows, hooks, CLAUDE.md, Skills, MCP — are Claude Code's; other harnesses expose their own analogues. Port the principle, swap the syntax.