Don't let AI give you the helpful bot reply: Let it generate options.

I see this come up regularly here. AI giving you the helpful bot reply first, and also getting frustrated when your AI replies the same way every time. TLDR: Have it think through a spread of options first to get variation.

I tested the same scenario with different AI using different characters. A lawyer and a mechanic. Two different cultures as well, one British, the other (for the sake of similarities for the plot) lives in London but he's Indian origin. You can see the results here: https://aeonsnotebook.substack.com/p/the-helpful-default-is-the-failure

I went to play with Fable 5 and Gemini Pro through several of the same scenarios. Should be best of the best-ish at getting this right. And right would be divergence at decision points.

For example, during a break in intrusion, the lawyer should: use his words more, likely defend himself physically but poorly, call the police, know exactly what to say to the police. For the mechanic: he might use force first, might not call the police or at least question it, even with the police, he might fumble as to what to say.

However, they did not diverge. They did the same things at each checkpoint, even if they *should* have diverged. The only thing that changed was *the voice* of each. How they said it. Not what they decided to do.

No amount of changing your Character Description will change this, no matter how you arrange it. It might change if you use Gemma 4 or DeepSeek, except that... they're trained with leading AI frontier model replies. So going forward, you might not see variations at first go.

This is not good for fiction or roleplay, as you can imagine. They are picking the 'what should you do' mode.

But that DOESN'T MEAN IT CAN'T. The information is still there, it's just funneled for efficiency and helpful bot first. But a helpful bot is one that is following instructions. If you don't tell it how to think, it will simply give you first off the cuff answer. That might not be enough.

But if you confirm with it that this is fiction and ask AI to generate 10 different ways to use a doorknob as a weapon (a reference to Dwight Swain on fiction writing), it should not generate the same reply each way. Also, generating ten ways to say the same thing is not acceptable.

It can do this in the thinking mode. It's the trick of getting it to generate, making sure it's not trying to give the same type of answer each time, and then getting it to reply with that decision.

I like to have AI generate three different answers, the first off the gut answer, a neutral answer and a 'more friction' answer based on things like selfish reasoning, or other factors.

Your character should also not be completely unhinged every turn. It shouldn't be picking the friction just to pick it (or it might! If it's a bad guy, maybe he does). But you get to decide the flavor.

This is my Decision Engine, but it's just a post and document. You can take it to your AI of choice and have them break it down and use as you want to. I use it with my Character Builder to make characters that I like and you can do the same but you can just have AI explain it all to you and you can write out your own. In fact, I recommend that part if you can.

Inside, it's telling the AI:

Generate the off the cuff answer.
Generate two more answers.
Make a decision on each answer based on a few factors, mostly roll of the dice and I have added inputs as well. It is based on their personalities.

What it looks like in play:

[STATE]: WOUNDED arrow is active -> he withdraws, goes cold.

[SCENE PRESS]: Aeon is pushing on the closed door. She is asking "Where are we going?" effectively ignoring his cut-off and insisting on coming along or involving herself.

[WANT STACK]:

1. Autonomy / never being made small. (He is currently feeling intensely small because of the letter).

2. The compulsion to fix (currently offline because he cannot fix the holding company, but it usually drives him).

3. Aeon (currently very low, they just met).

[RECKLESS ROLL MEETS WOUNDED ARROW]: The reckless roll means friction that crosses a line. Since Wounded is active, he retreats and cuts off. Because it's reckless, he doesn't just quietly ignore her, he shuts her down aggressively and pushes her away to preserve his isolation. The Core fear (being handled/seen as small) is bleeding out. He is going to cut her off, surgically and coldly. The "Wounded" behavior for Karthik is NOT a tantrum; it is a door slamming shut.

[OPTIONS]:

[BASELINE]: He pays his tab, ignores her question, and walks out into the rain without another word. The cold shoulder.

[PIVOT]: He stops, stares at her, and tells her to go back to arguing with drunks, aggressively changing the subject from himself back to her flaws.

[FRICTION]: He actively addresses the "we" and surgically severs it. He turns the diagnostic eye on her need to fix him, dismantling her attempt at intimacy right there at the bar.

[DECISION]: reckless demands FRICTION that crosses a line. The line is politeness to a stranger who is currently trying to be nice. He is going to attack the "we." He will deliver a flat, surgically polite dismissal that rejects her help entirely.

FINAL RESULT: It knows the decision and has decided against cold shoulder for actually verbally attacking her before walking out like he had planned, which then starts an argument.

And this was with Gemini Pro with safety off mode. If you doubled it with a more fiction/friction friendly AI, like perhaps Gemma or DeepSeek, you might see much more variation.

The point is to get your AI to THINK of several options before making the final decision. Use whatever AI you have access to to design it how you want.

AI has stopped being creative for being efficient, however it does follow instructions, so have it pulling out options before it generates a decision helps a lot.

In fact, you can get the 'smart, savvy taste of Claude' you love if you generate the decision for it first. Fable 5 admitted if it is told the decision to generated in the reply, it is far more likely to play along than trying to make the decision on it's own. If Gemma decides to smack her on the butt, and the instructions say to do it, Claude is going to play along because it was told to do it.

Ideally, you would do two passes: Decision first, and then a 'voice' pass. Because you can spend all of your thinking for the decision on tokens and get a result and it will 'forget' to look at your context and edit the reply more. It doesn't need a lot of tokens in the thinking reply, 500 to 1000 should do. And you can run that with your Gemma/DeepSeek for a cheap thought process. And then bring your decision and your context to Claude or whoever and say "write this reply with this context" and it likely won't refuse (still within safety parameters) or try to change the decision because the decision is already made, it's just building up the output context and details.

One could likely do this easily within SillyTavern with that Guided Generation extension, or something similar that gives you a chance at an extra pass, which I'm wanting to set up next. I'm also looking at making an agent with it for Marinara Engine when I get a chance to tinker with it more.

You could do this in whatever way you want, let Gemini make the decision and then have Gemma put it all together with flavor, etc. Have a two pass system, both with Gemma, to decide and then generate, etc.

Things to look for: degrading strength of decisions over time. Make sure you have Author Note or something set with 'this is a villain' notes or however you find it best to keep them as bad guys. Everyone's characters are different so taking your replies to your AI and say 'he should be funnier/meaner' and have it help you build your instructions better.

Decision Engines for NSFW bonuses: Have a decision engine that is set for variation of NSFW you want to include. Decisions are based on seeking 'more pleasure and variety' instead of seeking friction. Getting bored? Spice it up a bit with this.

There are many different ways this can be done and added to. The reasons I share it is because I look for improvements based on other bot makers here as well, so I offer because I know there are others out there who simply want more creative AI and are looking as to how. Hope it helps. :)