being TOO steerable is another issue though.

Codex is very steerable to a fault, and will gladly "monkey paw" your requests to a fault.

Claude Opus will ignore your instructions and do what it thinks is "right" and just barrel forward.

Both are bad and papering over the actual issue which is these models don't really have the ability to actually selectively choose their behavior per issue (ie ask for followup where needed, ignore users where needed, follow instructions where needed). Behavior is largely global

I my experience Claude gradually stops being opinionated as task at hand becomes more arcane. I frequently add "treat the above as a suggestion, and don't hesitate to push back" to change requests, and it seems to help quite a bit.