Why More Rules Made My AI Worse (And What Actually Fixed It)

I did something dumb for months.

Every time Claude went off-script, I added a new rule to my Notion context page. Dozens of rules became hundreds. The page got longer. Claude kept going off-script.

The problem wasn’t the rules. It was how I was serving them.

The Real Issue: Too Much Context, All at Once

Here’s something I’ve noticed: the more rules you give an AI at once, the less it follows any of them.

This sounds counterintuitive, but it makes sense when you think about it. Imagine giving a new employee a 500-page operations manual and saying “read it cover to cover, then get to work.” How much do they actually retain?

Now imagine telling them: “The index is on page one. You’re handling a customer complaint right now — go straight to Chapter 3.”

Same information. Completely different outcome.

AI works the same way. When everything lives in one giant page, the model loads it all, then tries to weigh hundreds of rules simultaneously while actually doing the task. The result: nothing gets followed well. It’s managing attention, not executing.

The Fix: A Navigation Hub + Subpages

The structure I landed on is simple:

A main page that does exactly one thing — tells Claude what this project is for, and what each subpage covers. No actual rules on the main page.

Rules live in their own subpages, organized by function: execution rules in one page, project background in another, Out of Scope in its own dedicated page.

Claude reads the main page first to get oriented, then jumps to whichever subpage is relevant to the current conversation. Less to load. More accurate.

Five Steps to Restructure Your Prompt Page

Step 1: Group what you already have

Before moving anything, go through your existing page and categorize each section: “how to behave” rules, background context, and “what not to do” constraints. Most bloated pages have all three mixed together.

Step 2: Create subpages with clear names

Build empty subpages under your main page. Start with the basics: “Execution Rules,” “Project Background,” “Out of Scope.” Add more if the project is complex — but only what you’ll actually need.

Step 3: Cut and paste into the right subpage

One type of content per subpage — this is the whole point. Don’t put execution rules and background context in the same place just because they feel related. That recreates the same problem one level down.

Step 4: Strip the main page down to navigation only

Clear everything off the main page except two things: a one-sentence project description, and a collapsible directory — one entry per subpage, with a single line explaining what that subpage covers. The main page should orient, not inform.

Step 5: Build the Out of Scope page — don’t skip this

This is the step most people skip. It’s also the most impactful.

Out of Scope isn’t more rules. It’s boundaries. When Claude isn’t sure whether to do something, it checks Out of Scope first — if the answer is in there, it stops and doesn’t improvise.

Telling your AI what not to do is more valuable than telling it what to do. Even two or three clear constraints here outperform ten vague rules elsewhere.

How to Know If a Rule Is Any Good

After restructuring, I started testing each rule with a single question:

Can I tell in five seconds whether a response violates this rule?

Yes → the rule works. No → it’s too vague. Rewrite it into something specific and verifiable.

Rules aren’t for humans to understand — they’re for an AI to check in real-time during execution. If a rule requires “reading between the lines” to interpret, that’s exactly the opening the model uses to go off-script.

What Changed After

Mostly: less debugging.

Claude still goes off sometimes. But now when it does, I can identify which subpage has the gap — clean structure means clear failure points. Before, I’d scan a wall of text looking for what went wrong. Now I check the relevant subpage, fix the rule, tell Claude to re-read it, done.

Opening a new conversation also got faster. Instead of “load that big Notion page,” it’s “read the main page, then check Execution Rules.” Less context, better retention, faster start.

Structure is the thing. Get that right and the rules mostly take care of themselves.

You might also like:

• The Prompt That Stopped My AI from Going Off-Script Every Time
• I Run Three Side Projects at Once. This Notion Log Keeps My AI Oriented.

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