Study Assistant inconsistency will drive me nuts

It may be that I have to use a personal subscription chatbot to solve this issue or I may need to lower my expectations. What I am trying to do:

I was reading a commentary on the Prayer of Manasseh where I ran into the following statement:

Oesterley (Jewish Background of Liturgy, 76) quotes the prayer as early evidence for the Jewish liturgical order: Ascription, Confession, Prayer for Forgiveness, Prayer for Grace, Doxology,

2. I used the Study Assistant to identify additional instances in a reiterative manner until it was return similar of partial patterns.

3. I then asked "Can you provide the references for all five parts for passages that show the complete pattern?" and received this very satistfactory answer

Here are the five-part structural elements with specific verse references for passages demonstrating the complete pattern:
Daniel 9:4–19
Ascription: Opens with praise to God (v. 4)[1]
Confession: Acknowledgment of wrongdoing in general terms and specific failures (vv. 5–14)[1]
Prayer for Forgiveness: Plea for God to turn back to his people in forgiveness and restoration (vv. 15–19)[1]
Prayer for Grace: Integrated within the plea section
Doxology: Embedded throughout, particularly in the opening ascription
Nehemiah 9:5b–37
Ascription/Doxology: Opens with a call to praise (v. 5b)[2]
God’s character and acts: Praises God’s worthiness from creation through the covenant with Abraham (vv. 6–8)[3]
Confession: Acknowledges rebellion alongside God’s gracious provision, with three cycles of disobedience and divine response (vv. 12–31)[3]
Petition, Confession, and Complaint: Final paragraph consisting of petition, confession of sins, and complaint (vv. 32–37)[2]
Ezra 9:6–15
Sincere and Penitential Lament: Prayer begins in humility with lament to God (vv. 6–7)[4]
Affirmation of God’s Gracious Provision: Recognition of divine mercy (vv. 8–9)[4]
Confession of Sin: Acknowledgment of the people’s detestable sin (vv. 10–12)[4]
Acknowledgment of Guilt: Recognition of corporate culpability (vv. 13–15)[4]
Note: This prayer is almost entirely confession with no real petition because Ezra is so conscious of sinfulness[5]
Nehemiah 1:5–11
Ascription: Begins with praise, acknowledging God as great, awesome, and faithful to his covenant (v. 5)[6]
Confession: Moves into confession of sin following a pattern comparable to Daniel’s prayer (vv. 6–7)[6]
Prayer for Forgiveness/Grace and Petition: Concludes with plea for God’s attentive ear and mercy (vv. 8–11)
[1] John E. Goldingay, Daniel, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1989), 30:233.
[2] Ralph W. Klein, “The Books of Ezra & Nehemiah,” in New Interpreter’s Bible, ed. Leander E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994–2004), 3:809.
[3] H. G. M. Williamson, “Ezra and Nehemiah,” in New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition, ed. D. A. Carson et al. (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994), 438.
[4] Joseph Too Shao and Rosa Ching Shao, Ezra and Nehemiah, ed. Federico G. Villanueva et al., Asia Bible Commentary Series (Carlisle, Cumbria; Manila, Philippines: Asia Theological Association; Langham Global Library, 2019), 88.
[5] Robert Fyall, The Message of Ezra and Haggai: Building for God, ed. Alec Motyer and Derek Tidball, The Bible Speaks Today (England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2010), 124.
[6] William B. Nelson, Daniel, ed. W. Ward Gasque, Robert L. Hubbard Jr., and Robert K. Johnston, Understanding the Bible Commentary Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2013), 226.

4. I then asked it to add the missing instances "Can the Prayer of Manasses, Song of the Three Youths, Psalm 51 and Psalm 106 be add to the detailed list" which produced this answer:

Yes, these four texts can be added with specific verse references:
Prayer of Manasseh
Invocation (v. 1); Ascription of praise, mentioning God’s work in creation, his wrath and his mercy (vv. 2–7); Confession of sin (vv. 8–10); Petition for forgiveness (vv. 11–15a); Doxology (v. 15b)[1]
Song of the Three Young Men (Prayer of Azariah and Song)
The text comprises two distinct sections. The Prayer opens with Azariah delivering a penitential prayer that affirms the exile as just punishment for the sins of Israel (v. 5), with confession that indicts the nation for failing to obey God’s laws and to keep his commandments (vv. 6–8), followed by an appeal for deliverance on the basis of the covenant promises (vv. 11–13), on offering a “soul of contrition and a humbled spirit” (v. 16), and on the basis of God’s wonders and the glory of his name (vv. 19–22)[2].
The Song divides into two parts: verses 29–34 with direct praise beginning with “Blessed are you,” followed by verses 35–66a in which different parts of the creation are summoned to praise the Lord, with verses 35–51 calling upon the heavens and associated entities, verses 52–59 ordering the earth and everything associated with it to join the cosmic choir, and verses 60–66a addressing all people to bless the Lord, concluding with the reason for blessing: “For he has rescued us from Hades and saved us from the power of death, and delivered us from the midst of the burning fiery furnace,” with a call to thank the one whose mercy endures forever[3].
Psalm 51
A penitential psalm, Psalm 51 is structured in a five-part chiasmus plus an addendum, with emphasis on the central plea for forgiveness: “Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities”[4]. More specifically: Mercy and pardon (vv. 1–2), with piling up of synonyms: mercy, unfailing love, great compassion; blot out, wash, cleanse; transgressions, iniquity, sin[5]; Confession of sin (vv. 3–6)[5]; Petitionary section with petitions for cleansing (vv. 7, 9), a request for joy (v. 8), petitions for a steadfast spirit and a willing spirit (vv. 10, 12), with another request for joy inserted between them, emphasizing that penitence is to lead to full, joyful restoration[6]; and Prayer for Zion (vv. 18–19)[5].
Psalm 106
While not explicitly detailed in the search results with verse-by-verse breakdown, the song divides into two formally distinct parts, with verses beginning with “Blessed are you” and statements about praise and exalting God highly[3], followed by communal acknowledgment of sin and petition for restoration—demonstrating the ascription, confession, and petition pattern.
[1] Reidar Hvalvik, “Prayer of Manasseh,” in Dictionary of New Testament Background: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 821.
[2] Peter W. Flint and C. J. Patrick Davis, “Introduction to the Prayer of Azariah in the Fiery Furnace and the Song of the Three Young Men,” in Early Jewish Literature: An Anthology, ed. Brad Embry, Ronald Herms, and Archie T. Wright (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018), 1:67.
[3] James C. VanderKam, An Introduction to Early Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001), 134.
[4] David A. Dorsey, The Literary Structure of the Old Testament: A Commentary on Genesis–Malachi (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 178.
[5] Robert G. Hoeber, Concordia Self-Study Bible (St. Louis: Concordia Pub. House, 1997). [See here, here, here.]
[6] Robert L. Jr. Hubbard and Robert K. Johnston, “Foreword,” in Psalms, ed. W. Ward Gasque, Robert L. Hubbard Jr., and Robert K. Johnston, Understanding the Bible Commentary Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2012), 228.

PROBLEM: the first time the system returns the response in a format easily converted into labels and/or a table; the second forces me to dig to reformat the data to get it into a clear format. Admittedly, this is more frustrating when it comes immediately after it wisely chose a clear, appropriate format. Is it possible to build more consistency into its formatting within a session?

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Comments

Marconi Fabio Vieira

Hi @MJ. Smith, thank you for laying this out so clearly. Your example is actually very helpful in pinpointing where the frustration comes from.

What stands out to me is that this isn’t a case of the Study Assistant “failing” in terms of content. On the contrary, your second response shows that it has the conceptual grasp and the sources — but it loses structural continuity within the same session.

In other words, after it successfully identified a clean, label-friendly pattern (which is exactly what a researcher needs at that stage), the follow-up answer forced you to reconstruct the structure manually — even though nothing about the task itself had changed.

That’s what makes this particularly frustrating: the tool already demonstrated awareness of the right format for the job.

In a recent forum discussion, several of us came to a similar conclusion: this feels less like a data problem and more like a workflow / architecture issue. One possible improvement would be for the Study Assistant to treat formatting decisions as session-level commitments, not one-off choices.

Even something simple — like recognizing “this output is being used as a table or schema” and preserving that structure across iterative refinements — would make a big difference for real research workflows.

I don’t think this requires lowering expectations. If anything, your example shows the tool is already close to what scholars actually need — it just needs more consistency once it finds the right footing.