My favorite instruction the last few weeks for getting Claude to explain something complex to me is: dumb it down
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Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article
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Re: Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article
#92I've started giving these instructions and I think I've been much more successful in generating clear output: Comment blocks are 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.
Shouldn't this all be easily doable via (auto-)prompting? Surely I don't need to "install" anything?
Re: Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
Claude Code supposedly supports a "post-compaction" hook, so you could have it automatically run the prompt "We just compacted the context, quickly refresh yourself on the rules in CLAUDE.md etc..". Depending on what you've got in those files, maybe that will just use up all the context again though.
> supposedly supports a "post-compaction" hook, so you could have it automatically run the prompt
Keyword "supposedly" :)
I've had it in my settings forever, and still...
Asking it to analyse and fix the issue it produced a plausible "my training supercedes/overrides settings especially if triggered by certain words in the phrase" (paraphrasing the long text)
Re: Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article
#94Claudette is a great name for Claude-related things. I get the threat of trademark infringement lawsuits.
Re: Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article
#95Has 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.
Watermarking? It certainly is useful for that. I see Claude-written prose AND I know instantly it's LLM writing. What I do with that knowledge varies.
Re: Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article
#96[flagged]
Re: Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article
#97[dead]
Re: Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The problem is, when the context window grows, You know the problem; then why not address it? Does Compacting the context not help?
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.
This does not match my experience. I use long-running orchestrator sessions. Each orchestrator is in charge of planning, writing kick-off prompts for implementers, answering questions from those implementers, doing code reviews and providing feedback, and answering side questions from me when I have them.
Depending on the initiative I might compact a session a dozen times, sometimes more. It is lossy, and the session certainly tends to forget earlier bits as more compactions happen, but overall it's a much better experience than starting fresh and having to re-explain everything.
The only time I compact is if the session goes wildly off-course and the context gets polluted with off-topic conversations.
Also worth noting: with Claude Code you can provide custom instructions when compacting, and instruct the LLM that is in charge of compacting the session to prioritize the retention of specific bits. It can help a lot.
Re: Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Claude Code supposedly supports a "post-compaction" hook, so you could have it automatically run the prompt "We just compacted the context, quickly refresh yourself on the rules in CLAUDE.md etc..". Depending on what you've got in those files, maybe that will just use up all the context again though.
> supposedly supports a "post-compaction" hook, so you could have it automatically run the prompt Keyword "supposedly" :) I've had it in my settings forever, and still... Asking it to analyse and fix the issue it produced a plausible "my training supercedes/overrides settings especially if triggered by certain words in the phrase" (paraphrasing the long text)
> Keyword "supposedly" :)
> I've had it in my settings forever, and still...
Checks out! I've never used it my self, so it I figured it likely didn't work at all.
Re: Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article
#100I've started giving these instructions and I think I've been much more successful in generating clear output: Comment blocks are 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.
Claude not only writes verbose comments, it also writes comments about how things used to work when refactoring. That might have a place in version control comments, but not in the code.
This!
Claude writes comments about how things used to work, which can be useful sometimes, especially if it's a big change that requires one to genuinely consider legacy behavior, but most of the time it shouldn't be there.
Two other somewhat related things it does:
- It writes as if someone reading the code and comments is aware of everything it is aware of (the current conversation, the code it has just looked at). It's really hard to make it understand that things need to stand on their own. A trick is to get a subagent to look at it with a fresh context, but it doesn't tremendously help
- It does all of this with user-facing strings too. Claude loves to write up tooltips and other labels that leak everything to the end user. Every single concern we have, every edge case we've meticulously made our code handle, it passes on to the user, so they don't "need to worry". But no sane user would think of these things. For them, a feature is a feature. The "dynamic scheduling" button should state what dynamic scheduling does plainly, and every edge case is handled by us. The "add" button does not need a label letting the user know that they will later be able to click the "delete" button, because the user will just realize it due to our adherence to proper design. Claude fails to understand good UX for the user cannot be replaced with endless labels and explanations.
It's an uphill battle and all attempts at solving this (or the brain-dead way new Anthropic models write) usually fail to work with me.