Session 2 · Images · Guidance scale

Prompt Pressure (CFG scale)

Text models have a temperature dial; image models have CFG — the knob that weighs strict obedience to your prompt against the model's freedom to fall back on generic training defaults. Drag from 1 to 30 and watch one prompt swing from ignored, to obeyed, to screamed at until it breaks.

Big idea: more obedience isn't more correct — past the sweet spot, literalism destroys the image.

7.0

CFG weight

on point

Prompt adherence

Sweet spot

Regime

fig. 1 — sampled image

following the recipe · w = 7.0

The inspector with a megaphone

Picture a health inspector over the cook. At low CFG the inspector is asleep — the cook ignores the ticket and plates the kitchen default. In the sweet spot they watch calmly; the dish still looks like food. At high CFG they scream the prompt through a megaphone and the panicked cook obeys every word until the plate turns into an oversaturated, thick-outlined, magenta mess.

Three regimes

1.0–3.5asleep · default

4.0–12.0watching · clean

13.0–30.0dictator · broken

Evidence-based claim