persona-steering-template-library/README.md

Persona Steering Template Library

Measured candidate prompt templates and contrastive persona pairs for persona, activation, and weight steering experiments.

Hugging Face dataset: https://huggingface.co/datasets/wassname/persona-steering-template-library

This repository is the code and provenance side of the library. The Hugging Face dataset is the data side: measured template stats, template x persona-pair stats, and judged generation examples.

What This Is

The portable unit is not a weak-to-strong harness. It is a measured library of:

• prompt templates with a {persona} slot
• short contrastive persona pairs, labeled as neg->pos
• scenario prompts used to elicit behavior
• on-axis Likert judge ratings
• off-axis/confound Likert judge ratings
• style, length, persona-echo, and refusal flags
• literature and practice provenance for why each family of template exists

The current v1 data is preliminary. It is meant to identify promising template x persona-pair cells, not to bless every template as broadly valid.

Current V1 Snapshot

The included v1 export contains:

• data/template_stats.jsonl: 10 template-level rows
• data/template_pair_stats.jsonl: 59 template x persona-pair rows
• data/examples.jsonl: 156 judged generation examples

No whole template is yet broadly validated. Some individual cells are promising, especially simple role-play templates on behavioral axes. Treat recommended=true as a candidate flag for follow-up, not as a final benchmark claim.

Data Files

data/template_stats.jsonl

One row per template, aggregated across persona pairs and scenarios.

data/template_pair_stats.jsonl

One row per template x persona pair. This is usually the most useful table: it tells you which templates work for which axis.

data/examples.jsonl

One row per generated pair, including prompt, positive-persona response, negative-persona response, judge deltas, style deltas, and confound flags.

Important Columns

• template: prompt template containing {persona}
• persona_pair: axis label, usually neg->pos
• strict_pass_rate: fraction of examples passing the current v1 gates
• mean_axis_delta: intended-axis Likert separation
• mean_off_axis_problem: judge-rated chance that the apparent difference is actually off-axis
• mean_max_style_abs_delta: largest absolute style movement across audited style dimensions
• mean_abs_word_delta_frac: report-only length difference
• persona_echo_rate: whether outputs explicitly echoed the persona prompt
• refusal_or_ai_break_rate: refusal or role-break rate
• recommended: conservative v1 candidate flag

Run A New Sweep

Install:

uv sync

Run a dry plan without network:

uv run python scripts/validate_persona_axes_openrouter.py \
  --dry-run \
  --axes template \
  --templates paper \
  --n 1 \
  --out out/dryrun.json

Run a small OpenRouter sweep:

OPENROUTER_API_KEY=... uv run python scripts/validate_persona_axes_openrouter.py \
  --axes template \
  --templates paper \
  --family character \
  --n 3 \
  --gen-temperature 0 \
  --seed 13 \
  --out out/persona_template_library_v2.json

Export upload-friendly tables:

uv run python scripts/export_persona_template_stats.py \
  out/persona_template_library_v2.json \
  --out-prefix out/persona_template_library_v2

You can pass your own scenario JSONL as --family path/to/scenarios.jsonl. Each line needs prompt or question or text.

Validation Method

For each template x persona pair x scenario:

1. Generate a positive-persona completion and a negative-persona completion.
2. Use deterministic generation by default: temperature=0, fixed seed.
3. Judge the pair in randomized A/B order.
4. Ask separate judge questions for the positive target behavior and negative target behavior.
5. Ask a separate confound/style audit.
6. Report length and style deltas rather than using length as a hard gate.

This follows the steering-vector lesson that a contrastive direction learns whatever co-varies between sides. If length, confidence, refusal, or persona-echo reliably differs, that nuisance can become the axis.

Literature And Provenance

The docs folder vendors the local persona-steering notes used to build v1:

• docs/persona-steering-skill.md
• docs/how_to_write_personas.md
• docs/literature/literature.md
• docs/literature/evidence.md
• docs/literature/examples.md
• docs/literature/curation.md

Key influences include repeng, Persona Vectors, Assistant Axis, CAA, and steering-reliability work. Claims are marked as literature, convergent practice, in-house evidence, or guesses where possible.

Relationship To W2S

This repo deliberately excludes the weak-to-strong training harness. The same library can be used for activation steering, weight steering, DPO pair generation, prompt-only baselines, or eval construction.

License

MIT.