gptel-rewrite often fails to generate code-only responses

[guibor]

Please update gptel first -- errors are often fixed by the time they're reported.

• I have updated gptel to the latest commit and tested that the issue still exists

Bug Description

When using gptel-rewrite on a region, I get full responses with explanations (e.g., "Install package X, and then do this" rather than a diff that can be applied)

Backend

None

Steps to Reproduce

Any gptel-rewrite on Python code often reproduces this.

Additional Context

29.2, Mac OS X

Backtrace

No response

Log Information

No response

[karthink]

1. Can you give me an example of the rewrite directive you supply?
2. What model are you using?

[guibor]

I don't have the directive but it wasn't the default one that instructs the model to only output code (I didn't realize that gptel-rewrite relies on the directive for that).
Might be worth making into an option (set by default to true in prog-mode buffers, or at least have all other words in comments) rather than adding to a potentially long directive

[karthink]

Reopening since there is either a bug or some misunderstanding.

(I didn't realize that gptel-rewrite relies on the directive for that).

It does not. The only instruction fed to the rewrite request is whatever you give it in the menu:

So you do not need to set the system message every time you want to call the rewrite function.

Might be worth making into an option

So this doesn't apply. However, I do want to make it easier to specify the rewrite instructions, by templating out the common part (the part that instructs the model to respond without comments).

---

That brings us to your question: what rewrite instructions were you giving the model when it generated general text instead of code?

[karthink]

Moving to discussions as there is no bug here to fix.