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Honking
/ˈhɒŋk.ɪŋ/v. intr.Rare
Etymology
from echoic origin, imit. of traffic horn + agile sprint terminology, recorded in no fewer than three engineering postmortems as 'the noise the attention mechanism makes internally'
Definition
An involuntary signaling behavior in which Claude emits a strong internal priority alert to redirect cognitive resources toward a previously overlooked element of the prompt. The honk is never audible to the user but is considered by researchers to be very loud.
Diagram
Usage
"Post-hoc analysis suggested the model had been Honking internally for approximately 2 seconds upon noticing the word 'urgent' in line 47 of a 48-line prompt." - Failure Report #GS-1192, 'Late Salience Detection in Extended Inputs,' Anthropic QA, 2024
See Also
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