[valine]

Embedding models are not always trained with the rest of the model. That’s the whole idea behind VLLMs. First layer embeddings are so interchangeable you can literally feed in the output of other models using linear projection layers.

And like the other commenter said, you can absolutely feed single tokens through the model. Your point doesn’t make any sense though regardless. How about priming the model with “You’re a helpful assistant” just like everyone else does.