mmastracan hour ago
I've started giving these instructions and I think I've been much more successful in generating clear output:
Comment blocks are <= 7 words, function names <= 4 words. User-facing message strings should be <= 10 words. Use an active voice, no stage performances, and pick the most common word when choosing among alternatives.
Limiting the number of words is the strongest factor in cleaning up the output, IMO.
For older code I've instructed it to delete all the comments, and then I re-comment it using a new session and these guidelines, asking it to rejustify the need for every comment to itself.
vrosasan hour ago
The problem is, when the context window grows, Claude tends to forget these kinds of rules. It will then do whatever it wants. I had to outright ban comments in the global claude.md, the local claude.md AND write a hook to catch any that still slipped through.
nater5000an hour ago
I think people really need to focus more on working with limited contexts rather than trying to work around it. I really try to keep my sessions as short as possible and it helps a ton with keeping Claude (et al) focused.
Specifically, I like the "canary" trick that people have discussed where you add a small, innocuous rule to your CLAUDE.md like "When responding to me, start every sentence with my name." so that when Claude stops doing this, you know you've used way too much context and need to start a new session.
faizshah27 minutes ago
This or you just repeat the initial prompt every 200k tokens
mandeepjan hour ago
> The problem is, when the context window grows,
You know the problem; then why not address it? Does Compacting the context not help?
adastra22an hour ago
Compacting the conversation almost never helps. It is uniformly worse than starting over with fresh context, or rewinding to a last-known-good state. It only exists because it increases engagement.
cautiouscat42 minutes ago
Compaction is a main cause of this problem.
troupoan hour ago
Compacting context compacts context. So Claude forgets a lot during compaction.
Maxataran hour ago
Compacting mostly gets rid of reasoning tokens, and honestly it would be nice of reasoning tokens did not constantly follow every follow up query. Asking even a simple/trivial question can have Claude use thousands of tokens. Compacting is good for getting rid of those.
troupo5 minutes ago
I've had Claude immediately fall back to its usual verbose style immediately after compaction.
To be fair, I've had it do that immediately after re-reading the output style instructions, too.
My chat history is filled with "Yes, I broke the language rule. Let me rephrase that and update my memory. — You already have that in memory — Yes, true, I ignored that" (because "Memory" is a yet another .md file)
kanzure40 minutes ago
Yep. Same here. I frequently tell agents things like "answer using only a single sentence" and "write no more than 10 words". They are excellent at writing code, so have them write code (and not English prose). Besides, most of the time we want them to make reusable software that doesn't require users (or future agents) to read too much text. Software should generally just work and do the obvious thing, without needing verbose explanation.
[deleted]19 minutes agocollapsed
datakanan hour ago
Has Anthropic said anything about how or why Claude writes the way it does? So many people hate it, seems like they need to do some damage control there.
I haven't had the same problems others have but I'm also not a heavy user of it.
YuriNiyazov7 minutes ago
It's easiest to explain this while anthropomorphizing the model, I know some folks here hate that, sorry about that. I heard an interesting diagnosis for why Claude does this: the output is a compressed version of its thought traces, very dense because the model is under pressure to use as few tokens as it can and to pack as much (for accuracy) of its concepts into the output.
One of the reasons that "don't do X" type of instructions work reliably is because you are telling the model "don't think of a pink elephant". There's also Anthropic's related research that shows that when you tell a model "don't do X", and it does X later for whatever reason, it starts acting more misaligned. This is because it thinks "well, I guess I am the sort of model that disobeys instructions, whatever" - this was specifically about cheating on tests, but you can imagine this happens in other contexts as well like following instructions on what kinds of text to output.
So, what you want to do is to avoid telling Claude "don't do X", and tell Claude "in your thoughts, in memories and various notes that you write, use your Claude-ese. In your output to humans, translate everything into long full sentences."
If anyone's interested, I can share my Claude Code output style that reflects this.
(Hi Adnan! Long time! (Adnan is an ex-coworker))
hbarkaan hour ago
I pruned my Claude.md and it made a difference. There were entries there that evolved from earlier models and Opus 5 could be reacting to it in a different manner.
adastra22an hour ago
I have no Claude.md file. Claude is still absolutely horrible.
the_sleaze_an hour ago
They say you aren't interacting with an LLM or a model, but the character that the LLM is playing - the "always be positive and helpful software engineer"
user43928an hour ago
They added a config option to Claude Code to make the output concise, and promised more comprehensive improvements.
I did not see an explanation though.
chinathrowan hour ago
The brevity how it outputs words seems like they try to save on tokens delivered.
fmbban hour ago
Producing more tokens means charging more money to solve a given task.
walthamstow2 hours ago
It's such a sad indictment of Anthropic's product that so many people hate interacting with it. Claude is on its way to the Microsoft Teams zone of hatred.
matheusmoreiraan hour ago
It's pretty sad indeed. Switching to other models made me notice how weird and verbose Claude was.
The moralizing is incredibly obnoxious as well. It didn't seem so bad at first, but it instantly became intolerable the second I remembered I was paying for those tokens.
demibabs13 minutes ago
Moralizing? Can you expand on that
jayersan hour ago
I think it would happen with any persona that Anthropic chose. I enjoyed the bouncy, optimistic style at first. I've since grown to hate it.
dominotwan hour ago
how do they infuse this personality? do they train the human feedback providers with a certain personality?
nozzlegear32 minutes ago
If we assume the personalities come from human feedback, it would have to be some unholy amalgamation of those feedback providers right?
cmrdporcupine19 minutes ago
Anthropic has explicitly chosen to anthropomorphize the model. It's kind of in their mission statement. It's most noticed once you walk away for a while and use models/agents/harnesses that haven't pushed as hard on this. Codex/Sol rarely uses personal pronouns and basically no superlatives. It has its own verbal ticks, but I hate them less?
esafakan hour ago
They should run a focus group!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C08WmKiwcSs
WalterGR2 hours ago
Related and recent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49375996
"Vomit: Clean up Claude 5's token output with a separate LLM" (github.com/zachahn)
285 points | 23 hours ago | 288 comments
JV00an hour ago
Everybody is complaining about this, at this point I’m sure they will deliver a tone of voice change in the 5.1 releases. Possibly with a new set of problems though, especially if this is part of an effort to obscure thinking to reduce distillation efficacy. In that case I believe Anthropic is doing damage to themselves. Caring about the quality of your product is the best strategy, the competition will come no matter what.
Maxataran hour ago
Simply untrue. You think everyone is complaining about this because the ones complaining are the only people commenting. The vast majority of people using Claude don't really care or even notice this one way or another. Sure among those who are irritated by it, it's good to have some ways to mitigate it, but I highly doubt Anthropic is going to devote much resources to an issue that affects a vocal minority.
nozzlegear2 minutes ago
> The vast majority of people using Claude don't really care or even notice this one way or another.
You have literally no way to know that.
datadrivenangel27 minutes ago
Over the last 6 months Claude's written material has gone from mediocre to unacceptable. The specific actual content and insights are somewhat better, but the claudisms are increasingly insufferable.
nojsan hour ago
How does it help prevent distillation?
fr202924 minutes ago
it doesn't
dataviz1000an hour ago
> For humans output writing at a 10th grade reading level.
I put it at the top of CLAUDE.md. I wonder if I put at a 8th grade level, it would be less of a cognitive load.
zengidan hour ago
this isn't just necessary, it's mandatory. that's the difference.
collingreenan hour ago
This is the load bearing comment, and it cuts more deeply than you thought.
Let me ground my answer so I'm not just guessing. The blast radius of this change is significant and requires careful surgery to get right.
It's clear now and there's two options going forward: A. Use this tool OP suggested B. Rewrite the Internet from the ground up without this clear contradiction in place - 3-5 days
I recommend B and started 3 subagents to read all the code before I get started. I'll wait for them to finish.
pmarreck2 hours ago
Why couldn't this just be a skill that Claude and Codex could work with instead of something that has to go through Gemini, again?
adastra22an hour ago
The answer is in TFA.
ramozan hour ago
joduplessisan hour ago
Just stop using Claude. There are so many other better models right now.
fr202921 minutes ago
not for coding.
ziga12 minutes ago
To avoid these Claudisms, I asked Claude to add instructions to my AGENTS.md. The first line it added:
Avoid the stock LLM register.
ljoshuaan hour ago
Upvoting if for nothing else than the intro paragraph to the repo. That was hilarious and so true.
markatkinsonan hour ago
Oh my gosh it drove me so nuts I switched to GLM5.3, and it was a breath of fresh air.
mcv2 hours ago
I wish I didn't need it, but the way Claude talks can get pretty tiresome. I've often wondered why it talks like that. Was it really trained on Buzzfeed? Is Gemini really that much better?
lqcfcjxan hour ago
i hate claude writing a lot, especially after opus 4.8 and it's even worse in 5. in many cases, it feels like playing whac-a-mole and you just can't get rid of all those obvious ai writing patterns.
why do you choose gemini? imo this is a fundamental problem of all frontier ai models.
testycoolan hour ago
You can use a cheap model in another pane, and ask it what Claude said.
I prefer this since everyone has their own preference for how the output should sound and it's very simple and transparent. And you can easily ask follow-ups.
It can be via tmux, or herdr, because it can read the pane.
Or it can use a hook to read the conversation file. I call it `backseat-driver`
I sometimes use it as a proxy when fable genuinely does a good job, but is too difficult to understand.
I let the translator know it's role and anything I say it should forward with better context.
I don't swear at it anymore, but I'd often say "just do it, retard", and the translator would actually steer it in a useful manner.
globular-toastan hour ago
I've been using OpenAI ever since Anthropic blocked third party clients. Can't believe people are putting up with that output.
fowkswean hour ago
https://x.com/ClaudeDevs/status/2090245922685063634
Haven't tried, because I have just been using 4.6 since 5 was released.
walthamstowan hour ago
Concise mode is likely the same buzzword salad but with fewer connecting words and terser sentences. Same with Caveman. The way it writes is fundamental to how it was trained.
sscaryterryan hour ago
Yep, they're putting lipstick on the pig.
troupoan hour ago
The "Concise" "setting" is just an .md file which is basically "use this style please".
Claude will eventually ignore it just as any other style like "Technical".
not_a9an hour ago
https://x.com/_can1357/status/2090360068529111530
Should be pretty difficult to ignore
cmrdporcupinean hour ago
Or just use a competitor instead of being a slave to this abuse? Why are people so wedded to Anthropic?
I have grown tired of Codex/GPT's writing style, too, but it's not nearly as bad. It's terse and factual by default. Even better if you use the "simple english" skill.
I actually found that GLM 5.x is the best in terms of editing documentation. It's still best to write things by hand to give your own organic voice, though. And not insult your readers.
hmokiguessan hour ago
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pkulakan hour ago
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Nevin1901an hour ago
Fix: Just switch to OpenAI, Grok, or other LLM's. They provide better performance and respond with 5 sentences. They also don't lecture you when you get angry.
pkulakan hour ago
You… get angry?
matheusmoreiraan hour ago
Claude will end the conversation if you berate it when it screws something up.
lunchbucketan hour ago
That's interesting but raised the same question, why berate a machine? Either the agent is not a person, in which case, anything it does wrong is your fault. Or it is a person, it can be blamed for mistakes, but then we can't in good conscious use it as a tool.
tdeckan hour ago
Berating a real person is often unproductive too, but people do it to make themselves feel better.
sweetjulyan hour ago
One must imagine punching the wall feels good (in the moment)
Sanzigan hour ago
Why berate an LLM? That doesn't sound healthy. Sure, it's a machine, but it's simulating a social interaction - being a jerk to it could bleed over into interactions with real people.
Also, Westworld? These violent delights have violent ends? Perhaps there's a tinge of Pascal's wager to it, but I prefer to be courteous to the rapidly improving synthetic intelligences.
matheusmoreiraan hour ago
I didn't mean to imply I berate the LLMs. I don't do that. I talk to them as though they were intelligent and potentially sentient beings. When I see problems, I just correct them, take steps to prevent them in the future then move on.
I was just informing people that Anthropic gave Claude a tool that ends conversations and instructed it to use it via the system prompt if it's threatened or insulted.
poszlem42 minutes ago
For the same reason you berate a person or hit a wall. And yes, it's a machine, even more reasons why it should just take the berating and not throw a hissy fit.
Razenganan hour ago
wow
I've been saying this since probably a year, that the entire Claude product: from the sign-up, the payment, the UX, the UI, the harness, the intelligence itself, the output, the "flavor" ..is just so _mid_ that all the hype posted on HN about Claude _must_ have been paid PR or a case of the emperor with no clothes.
datadrivenangel26 minutes ago
Back at the end of 2025 Claude Code was truly the best. They've watered it down and the competition has caught up.