SoftPrompt-IR

Low-Level Intent Weighting & Direction Annotation for LLM Prompts

SoftPrompt-IR is not a DSL, not a framework, and not a policy system.

It is a minimal symbolic annotation layer for explicitly expressing:

• intent strength
• intent direction
• intent priority
• intent dominance / override

inside natural language prompts.

It defines no execution logic. It only exposes intent structure that is otherwise implicit.

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Why SoftPrompt-IR Exists

LLMs already reason over latent signals such as:

• priority
• strength
• hierarchy
• enforcement vs. avoidance
• dominance between instructions

Today, these signals are usually:

• implicit
• buried in prose
• distributed across sentences
• easy to contradict unintentionally
• hard to inspect or debug

SoftPrompt-IR makes these signals explicit and localized.

Not to gain more control — but to reduce ambiguity, noise, and unintended behavior before sampling.

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Core Idea

SoftPrompt-IR uses small symbolic operators to annotate intent along two axes:

1. Strength (how much it should matter)
2. Direction (enforce vs. avoid, downstream vs. blocking)

It does not tell the model what to do — it tells the model what matters more than what.

Think of it as weighting signals, not commands.

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Minimal Example

@TASK(
  "Write a short story about a failed mission."
)

~<<< PURPLE_PROSE
~<<  CLICHES
~<   OVER_EXPLAINING

These are relative avoidance signals, not prohibitions.

Interpretation (informal)

• Strongly avoid purple prose
• Moderately avoid clichés
• Gently discourage over-explaining

There are:

• no hard rules
• no prohibitions
• no forced decoding

Only probability shaping via relative weight.

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Cascading & Dominance (The Important Part)

SoftPrompt-IR is intentionally asymmetric.

More symbols = more weight Stronger markers dominate weaker ones

!>>> PRIMARY_CONSTRAINT
~>>  SECONDARY_PREFERENCE
~>   OPTIONAL_STYLE

This creates a cascade:

• strong intent dominates weaker intent
• global signals dominate local ones
• conflicts resolve by weight, not prose order

No if/else. No branching. Just dominance.

More weight only matters relative to other signals — stacking strength everywhere removes contrast and reduces its effect.

Direction Matters

Direction is part of the signal — not decoration.

In SoftPrompt-IR, direction never stands alone. It always modifies a strength marker. (Direction never modifies intent on its own — it always attaches to an intent marker.)

Canonical Form

[STRENGTH][DIRECTION]

Strength always comes first. Direction always comes after.

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Valid Examples

!>>> MUST_ENFORCE
~<<< STRONGLY_AVOID
~<   GENTLY_DE_ESCALATE

Informal intuition:

• > pushes intent forward / downstream
• < pulls intent away / de-escalates
• repetition amplifies directional influence
• strength determines enforcement level

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Dependencies (Special Case)

Dependencies are explicit prerequisite signals

They are defined only like this:

!<<< REQUIRED_CONDITION

Meaning:

This intent cannot proceed unless the requirement is satisfied.

Dependencies are not equivalent to “strong backward preference”. They are a separate semantic construct.

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Invalid Forms (Do Not Use)

>>! SOME_CONSTRAINT
<<~ SOMETHING

Why these are invalid:

• strength must not appear after direction
• direction must not precede strength
• there is no postfix weighting in SoftPrompt-IR

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These signals are not formal semantics — they are structural cues the model already recognizes from rules, configs, policies, and priority annotations seen during training.

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Why This Works (Without Training)

LLMs have seen massive amounts of:

• config files
• rulesets
• policies
• flags
• priority markers
• logs and diagnostics

SoftPrompt-IR does not invent meaning.

It leverages the model’s ability to exploit:

• consistent structure
• relative salience
• symbolic hierarchy

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What SoftPrompt-IR Is Not

SoftPrompt-IR is not:

• a jailbreaking technique
• a prompt hacking method
• a safety bypass
• a classifier replacement
• a programming language

In many cases, it does the opposite: 👉 it makes unsafe or contradictory intent harder to hide.

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Why Low-Level Matters

SoftPrompt-IR operates below common prompt conventions.

That makes it:

• composable with any prompt
• compatible with safety systems
• ignorable if unsupported
• predictable when it fails

Low-level primitives tend to:

• age well
• combine easily
• degrade gracefully
• be hard to misuse accidentally

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Design Philosophy

SoftPrompt-IR prioritizes:

• explicit over implicit
• weighting over wording
• de-escalation over prohibition
• structure over cleverness
• compatibility over control

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SoftPrompt-IR is meant to annotate only the parts that tend to be misweighted, not every detail of a prompt.

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Status

This is an experimental specification.

There is:

• no enforcement
• no guarantee
• no hidden mechanism

Just a small idea:

Make intent visible before sampling.

If it feels obvious in hindsight — that means it’s probably at the right level 🙂