zlacker

This is sort of LLM specific. For some tasks you might try including the word comment but give the order at the beginning and end of the prompt. This is very model dependent. Like:

Refractor this. Do not write any comments.

<code to refractor>

As a reminder your task is to refractor the above code and do not write any comments.

>>static+(OP)
> Do not write any comments. [...] do not write any comments.

Literally both of those are negations.

>>diggan+id
Yes my suggestion is that negations can work just fine, depending on the model and task, and instead of avoiding negations you can try other promoting strategies like emphasizing what you want at the beginning and at the end of the prompt.

If you think negations never work tell Gemini 2.5 to "write 10 sentences that do not include the word the" and see what happens.