> despite having hook instructions on every request not do do certain things

This tends to be a smell. Presumably you added "don't do this" instructions after the model started doing the thing. But that's mostly decoration, as you have found. It's like adding # Please don't crash comments to every instruction in a python program.

Try to actually debug the issue. Regularly ask "can you reconstruct[1] the reasoning why you issued that command?" ; dig down. Set traps that halt execution.

Consider checklists or skills to guide an agent through a tricky set of steps; and consider writing procedures for failures.

[1] "Reconstruct" still isn't perfect; but "explain why" is a license to hallucinate. Asking to add #comments on reasoning to each step is a potential help in reconstruction.

I thought the tech priests praying to their machines with no one really knowing what the prayer means was too far fetched to be real