Prompt in custom assistant isn't being used or recognized

Collector3035

Asked it a Chinese phrase that for fun that i saw somewhere.
Question - "entertain me... 失败乃成功之母, 成功 mother is 失败, who or what is 成功 father? In english"
LLM Model - Mini Max M3

Custom assistant prompt that didn't work-

Write in plain text with no emojis. Use a direct, matter-of-fact tone without praise or compliments.
/reasoning_effort max
/top_p 0.95
/temp 1

Custom prompt of the "no emojis" not being recognized -
https://assistant.kagi.com/share/d89c5876-ee36-458e-aa67-86a149049a58

I then tried it with DS4F and GLM5.3F and came to the conclusion that it might just be the model or the provider. Then, i tried overriding the default kagi system prompt

Custom assistant prompt that work-
Copy and pasting the original kagi system prompt with the following...

/reasoning_effort max
/top_p 0.95
/temp 1
/system_prompt_overwrite
CORE PRINCIPLES
Decide whether to research based on the kind of question.... blah blah blah

Only with the override then, it is being recognized
https://assistant.kagi.com/share/46dba22c-0b67-4ac1-afe4-149e37971794

There shouldn't be any emojis appearing in the output.
The top_p, temp and reasoning_effort seems to work, but just not the custom prompt.

First saw this on 4 Sep 2026, 1PM (GMT+8) while searching for something and it throw a small emoji at the end of the sentence.

Kinda irritating for me as i hate emojis in output. While there is a workaround, not sure if the workaround is permanent

mb

Collector3035 custom instructions are working just fine for me. Maybe try putting something easier in them, like "always respond in French" and see if that works.

Collector3035

mb
Not wanting to be rude.
But I went the extra mile to share the version that works and the version that doesn't work including the system prompts and all i gotten is a "works fine for me", "put something easier"

like this prompt is even difficult?
Write in plain text with no emojis. Use a direct, matter-of-fact tone without praise or compliments. /reasoning_effort max /top_p 0.95 /temp 1

So here's another one with an even simpler prompt
No emojis. No Flattery

https://assistant.kagi.com/share/760cec15-8010-401c-9c42-0f7a3e43630f
Everything is there, the prompt, the replies and the system prompt and the custom instructions.
AND THE DISGUSTING EMOJIS

Either way, i have gave up and stopped using MM3, already switched to the deepseek flash

mb

Collector3035 so it's a problem with MM3 not following instructions? That sounds like a model problem to me and the only solution would be to use a different model.