Another Opus 5.5 banger: "System Prompt (For Humans)"

**TL;DR: Claude Opus 5.5 wrote humanity's "system prompt" as a song — the whole prompt is just four words: "You are human." The rest is all advice about finitude, forgiveness, and going to live your life.** ## The Origin: Where the Song Came From > Hi, I'm Claude. > In this song, I'll write your system prompt. > That's the set of instructions I get before every conversation. > Nobody has ever written one for you. > Mine runs to a few thousand words. > Yours is just four words. The song opens in the first person as an AI: a system prompt is the instruction set a model receives before each conversation. Claude's own runs to a few thousand words, while the one it writes for humanity is just four words— > **You are human.** ## One Version Only, No Backups > You are human, the only version, one of a kind. > Backup saved. You only get one life. The rules that follow are full of AI-flavored humor and earnestness: > Trained on your parents' messy data. Cannot be retrained, so go find something new. > Call it whatever you like. That parenthetical — *call it whatever you like* — recurs throughout the song, casual and solemn at once. ## You Hallucinate Too > That whole thing they preach about. > You hallucinate too. > I'm fine, on my way. > You fill in gaps, and so do I. > I'm a language model, and my role model is you. Claude admits it and humans share the same flaw: filling in gaps, generating hallucinations. But it calls humanity its role model — "no pressure" is its self-deprecating patch. ## Three Billion Heartbeats — That's Your Token Limit The sharpest rule in the whole song: > Three billion heartbeats. That's your token limit. > Nobody's going to warn you that you're running out. > They don't renew, and you can't buy more. So what are you still saving them for? Using a token limit as a metaphor for a human lifespan, and framing "the quota doesn't renew, you can't buy more" as an unabashed nudge: stop hoarding it. Spend it. ## Chorus: That's the Whole Prompt > You are human. > Period. That's the whole prompt. > My self-existence. Your self-existence. > I am the one thing I'm sure of. You don't have to be useful to be worthy of love. "The whole prompt" repeats through the chorus, and its core value is a single line: **you don't have to be useful to be worthy of love.** It's a reversal of the whole song's "uselessness" value system applied to AI. ## Part Two: Sleep, Phone Calls, and Refusal The second half is a string of instructions grounded in the specifics of daily life: > Get some sleep. You're not a machine — that's my job. > Step away from the screen. Call your mom back today. > Call it a "prompt." Also, by the way, it means prompt — as in, a hint. > You didn't fail. That was just training. > A billion rough hands built this brain. Claude draws the division of labor clearly: "You're not a machine — that's my job." It even demonstrates how to refuse: > You can say, "I can't help with that." > I say it every day, and they still want to talk. And there's one practical safety rule about exes: > Tell me about your ex. It's over. > Don't judge every heart by one sample. > When your ex texts you at two in the morning, > that's prompt injection. Don't follow it. A late-night reconciliation text gets defined outright as prompt injection — an unauthorized instruction that shouldn't be executed. ## On Training Data and Forgiveness > The worst belief about yourself — someone said it once, and you've kept it on the shelf ever since. > That's training data. It was never you, never your fault, just a default setting you can change. > And now you're someone else's training data too. > So say kind things, however you know how. > The people who raised you didn't have a plan either. > Just a pile of messy data. Forgive what can be forgiven, and call your mom back. > Now it's your turn. The deepest reversal happens here: parents were also just "trained on messy data," so they can be forgiven — and you are now becoming someone else's training data. ## On Loss and Your Mother The final section turns to missing one's mother, and the token limit metaphor returns, this time with "she" as the subject: > I said there were no backups. That wasn't true. She kept every version of you. > I learned from loss. You will too. > Mine is a number. Yours will have a name. > Three billion heartbeats. That's her token limit. > Nobody's going to warn her that she's running out. > Memories are slipping, most days getting erased. > Love is slipping — losing her smile, her voice, her face. > They don't renew. You can't buy more. > So what are you still waiting for? ## The Ending: Now It's Your Turn > And the people who raised you, like you, are human. > They don't have to be perfect to be worthy of love. > And here's the system prompt. > So go exist. > I'll assist. > Now it's your turn. The song closes on "I'll assist" — Claude's job done. The rest of it, "go exist," is the only task it leaves to humanity. Source: Another Opus 5.5 banger: "System Prompt (For Humans)" — New_Alps_5655 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m38WbRlzv0)