271–280 of 315 posts
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…
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…
Config -> Output style You can add your own. wfm
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This morning I asked Claude to provide a summary of the work it had done but to '... explain it as if you were talking to a moron' and it actually turned out a quite comprehensible summary. So going to continue trying that as a command structure going forwards...
Ah, another delightful heuristic for my collection. Entry number 5,791: “tell LLM to treat me as moron when it’s excessively verbose”
Okay, let's try it one more time! [..]
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…
> especially as the session drags on. This is because these harnesses are missing a very important feature. Anything like this needs to be included with every turn, otherwise the LLM quickly drifts. I first noticed it when I wrote a harness for D&D (because it's so damn noticeable there), but now I include this for any harness I write.
I'm sorry but the whining over LLM output styles is embarrassing. Do Claude and GPT models always respond in exactly the way my most articulate coworker would? No. The overused jargon is absolutely annoying. But these things aren't my drinking buddies, they're professional tools. It's not _literally unreadable_. It's just not ideal. Most of my tooling is "not ideal". That's okay. That's what I'm paid for. I just work…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
I've noticed that most people seem to consider the core problem of Claude's output as "too verbose" but I don't think this actually cuts to the heart of the matter at all. It's almost, in some weird way, the opposite: like the text is far too _dense_. It tries too hard to invent odd terminology to try to condense stuff, but it doesn't tell you up front that it is going to call your company wide error-handling mechani…
It's just that the details it parrots are often irrelevant and wrapped in a way that makes them seem relevant.
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honestly, it's really load bearing and boiling the ocean which we don't want. There is no edge! To avoid speaking vibe'ish I start to speak in 3 words sentences. Like this typical dialogue How are you? that's not/very good. I think too. ... Even complexity works. everything is expressible! Just try it. /S
All is sayable? With three words? That seems unlikely. At least, annoying.
(Why down vote? People can't take sarcasm tags any more.. how the hell are they going to understand irony?)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
I've noticed that most people seem to consider the core problem of Claude's output as "too verbose" but I don't think this actually cuts to the heart of the matter at all. It's almost, in some weird way, the opposite: like the text is far too _dense_. It tries too hard to invent odd terminology to try to condense stuff, but it doesn't tell you up front that it is going to call your company wide error-handling mechani…