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Vomit: Clean up Claude 5's token output with a separate LLM

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Re: Vomit: Clean up Claude 5's token output with a separate LLM

#171

Post by cyanydeez »

lxgr wrote: post #26
bob1029 wrote: post #20

At some point one has to wonder if it's still worth using anthropic's models if we need to babysit 100% of its output with another vendor's model. Why not just use that other vendor's model for everything? I can't help but feel the circumstances that enable this kind of front page article are vestigial from the days when OAI was super bad and Anthropic was beyond reproach. This change-over-time is why I avoid getting…

> Why not just use that other vendor's model for everything? Effectively all models can do style transfer reasonably well at this point, but not so much for "actual reasoning". If the combination of two works better for you than each one by itself, why wouldn't you stack them like that?

whats going on is openai and anthropic have tons of garbage in their system prompts "don't talk about goblins" so your ability to override that garbage is nearly wiped out. This is "alignment" and I'm pretty sure both orgs have convinced themselves that this benefits the customer.

Re: Vomit: Clean up Claude 5's token output with a separate LLM

#172

Post by incrudible »

extr wrote: post #103
incrudible wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opus 5 is literally unbearable to read for me, but more importantly, it is much worse than 4.8 and that one was already annoying. The more they train it on its own output, the more pronounced its idiosyncrasies become.

It's "literally unbearable" when the AI that completes software engineering tasks at 100x speed and quality from 2 years ago uses too much jargon?

It is not the jargon per se, it is the style. Other models even in the same family are not as bad, and I still have to babysit it, so the voice matters.

Re: Vomit: Clean up Claude 5's token output with a separate LLM

#174

Post by jchook »

striking wrote: post #148
trefoiled wrote: post #31

I've been grappling with this for weeks, not just in Claude but in Codex as well, which isn't quite as bad but still annoying. AGENTS.md does very little, agents will consistently violate the communication preferences, especially as the session drags on. It's incredible to me that there's no good way to reliably change the way an LLM responds to you that a workaround like this would even be necessary. It seems like s…

I asked Claude to do the following: > hello i would like to configure a new output style for you. it should keep the coding instructions (as you will still be coding!) and otherwise produce the same output, but with two new caveats. first, long detailed replies are still permitted, but if employed they must end in a bullet pointed summary whose points are all brief; if the summary attempt ends up not being so brief,…

Claude already does summaries at the end of long output but they often sound even more like terse jargon nonsense than the long form, eg “the hardwired seam and the relocated barrel”.

Sometimes the summaries feel totally alien to the task or code.

Re: Vomit: Clean up Claude 5's token output with a separate LLM

#175

Post by throwaway219450 »

svara wrote: post #81
trefoiled wrote: post #31

I've been grappling with this for weeks, not just in Claude but in Codex as well, which isn't quite as bad but still annoying. AGENTS.md does very little, agents will consistently violate the communication preferences, especially as the session drags on. It's incredible to me that there's no good way to reliably change the way an LLM responds to you that a workaround like this would even be necessary. It seems like s…

I'm probably going to be going against the grain here, but I think it's not as bad as it looks at first. I was similarly frustrated a few months ago, but have noticed I've started to learn the idiom. Its use of "dense jargon" and "stilted metaphor" is actually surprisingly consistent - it's speaking its own dialect, and you get used to it. After a while it gets much easier to read and even becomes somewhat efficient,…

I’m starting to think this is why Opus suddenly started making 4-5 line comment blocks. They justify why a change was made and gives the next agent something to go on. I delete them and move on, but no amount of “don’t over comment” “match comment style” makes it persistent.

I am definitely guilty of wondering why past me made such a harebrained decision, and why past me didn’t think to write any notes, but does it matter? It’s in the commit history and we can bisect or revert if we find a regression.

Re: Vomit: Clean up Claude 5's token output with a separate LLM

#176

Post by data-ottawa »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #135
retrac wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its use of "dense jargon" and "stilted metaphor" is actually surprisingly consistent - it's speaking its own dialect, and you get used to it. This dialect is idiosyncratic to you and Claude based on your session history and memory. I've noticed Claude's output mimics my writing style. > Registers the board implements but whose behaviour is not modelled Right down to my preferred spellings. As several comments I've…

that is not my experience at all; I never write the way Claude does or use its vocabulary. I also find myself regularly editing its code comments, which do not match my expectations of succinct, clear, not over explained, etc. I ask it to read my edited comments to improve its writing, which has helped _somewhat_. (The code itself that it writes is decent, though it still overcomplicates things. I find myself writing…

The only solution I’ve found that works is asking Mistral medium to rewrite all of Claude’s documentation and comments, then I review and rewrite the final draft for anything mistral misunderstood.

I find Claude has become very difficult to work with and incapable of writing clear documentation, even when directly prompted or provided samples.

As for code, I think each function requires 3-4 passes with Fable to actually get to a point I accept as good code. I am picky though.

The other Claudism that drives me crazy is when it writes comments and commit messages that track how you arrived at an decision instead of what it is.

Re: Vomit: Clean up Claude 5's token output with a separate LLM

#177

Post by bitexploder »

trefoiled wrote: post #31

I've been grappling with this for weeks, not just in Claude but in Codex as well, which isn't quite as bad but still annoying. AGENTS.md does very little, agents will consistently violate the communication preferences, especially as the session drags on. It's incredible to me that there's no good way to reliably change the way an LLM responds to you that a workaround like this would even be necessary. It seems like s…

It seems a little excessive to use another LLM. With OMP I basically created an ephemeral prompt stack all of my agent files. It walks up the directory tree looking for any Gemini.md, Agents.md or Claude.md files. And it puts those at the very top of the stack. Then at the end of every turn, it pops those off to preserve the conversation history. So every turn, they get all of my fresh instructions, which include things like what and how to use language, how to render results and things like that. Net effect, every turn, the agent gets the instructions and it adds to that turn's tokens, but it does not become a part of the conversation history, which is really important for not bloating up the context. So it's always just however many tokens are in that file instead of it becoming a permanent part of the context.

Re: Vomit: Clean up Claude 5's token output with a separate LLM

#178

Post by jesse_ash »

viccis wrote: post #70
imalerba wrote: post #5

I like the "Claudish to English" name better. https://github.com/gvzdv/claudish-to-english

The Claudish example seems to have more information. Are people really having trouble parsing this??

Yes. Every single response has this level of _serious_ detail (the kind you'd only go into when you really need someone to understand something).

Re: Vomit: Clean up Claude 5's token output with a separate LLM

#179

Post by bitexploder »

svara wrote: post #81
trefoiled wrote: post #31

I've been grappling with this for weeks, not just in Claude but in Codex as well, which isn't quite as bad but still annoying. AGENTS.md does very little, agents will consistently violate the communication preferences, especially as the session drags on. It's incredible to me that there's no good way to reliably change the way an LLM responds to you that a workaround like this would even be necessary. It seems like s…

I'm probably going to be going against the grain here, but I think it's not as bad as it looks at first. I was similarly frustrated a few months ago, but have noticed I've started to learn the idiom. Its use of "dense jargon" and "stilted metaphor" is actually surprisingly consistent - it's speaking its own dialect, and you get used to it. After a while it gets much easier to read and even becomes somewhat efficient,…

I decided not to get used to its communication style. It encourages it to invent terminology and drift away from simple and proper engineering in my opinion. Also, it is pretty simple to change as long as you’re not using the Claude code CLI or desktop app.

Re: Vomit: Clean up Claude 5's token output with a separate LLM

#180

Post by _puk »

0xffff2 wrote: post #130
retrac wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its use of "dense jargon" and "stilted metaphor" is actually surprisingly consistent - it's speaking its own dialect, and you get used to it. This dialect is idiosyncratic to you and Claude based on your session history and memory. I've noticed Claude's output mimics my writing style. > Registers the board implements but whose behaviour is not modelled Right down to my preferred spellings. As several comments I've…

You're just lucky that your preferred spelling happens to align with Claude's. It is categorically impossible to get any Anthropic model to consistently use American spelling in the last few releases.

It told me to correct a spelling mistake in some content I was sanity checking earlier..

It was British English.

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