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I-have-ADHD: A skill to stop coding agents from burying the answer

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Re: I-have-ADHD: A skill to stop coding agents from burying the answer

#241
post #71

Let's face it. Claude (in particular) is a terrible writer. There's a whole cottage industry of skills and CLAUDE.md instructions trying to push it toward writing better, but each new model iteration seems expressly designed to override all that so that it can load up its writing with unnecessary participle phrases, not-this-but-thats, burying the lede, and other nonsense. I genuinely wonder if the people inside Anth…

Said it before, I'm almost sure the awful text it generates is part of the fingerprinting feature.

Re: I-have-ADHD: A skill to stop coding agents from burying the answer

#242
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was incredibly surprised how much better was Astra at rephrasing the docs that Fable came up for a project I am about to publish. The instructions are now actually what a human would expect, with clear logic flow diagrams, lists itemized, short paragraphs. It also actually correctly detected the train-of-thought leftovers, as well as stuff that never made it to final version of the project and removed them. Meanwhi…

These resets also reset your weekly timer right. So it’s like, you may have 30% left for 1 days that you want to use. They reset it, and that means you your “new week” timer starts today. That sucks, because it doesn’t always work in your favour if you plan your weekly spend. I think a real reset shouldn’t also reset your week timer.

Yes, I was saving my 95% usage for the last day. Then they reset it. Now I have lost 95% usage!! Im back to 7 days and got locked in at only 5% usage for the week - that's actually theft.

Re: I-have-ADHD: A skill to stop coding agents from burying the answer

#243
post #161
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant anecdata because I've burned many a Claude sessions on this. If you're using Claude Code, then it's in the harness. At the close of many sessions, I would start a meta conversation over why the LLM would consistently break certain rules. What it found when debugging itself is that some of the "contradicting" rules that I had were in fact, not from my rules. Instead, the instructions from its own harness had…

You can't trust it's account on why it did something, it does not "remember". It will just make up something plausible sounding.

It has access to its own instructions, right? Otherwise how would the instructions work?

Re: I-have-ADHD: A skill to stop coding agents from burying the answer

#244
post #71

Let's face it. Claude (in particular) is a terrible writer. There's a whole cottage industry of skills and CLAUDE.md instructions trying to push it toward writing better, but each new model iteration seems expressly designed to override all that so that it can load up its writing with unnecessary participle phrases, not-this-but-thats, burying the lede, and other nonsense. I genuinely wonder if the people inside Anth…

Your comment quite badly violates the HN guidelines. You should review them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> "Let's face it" "terrible writer" "other nonsense" "do Anthropic people actually talk like that" "Dario's engrams"

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Edit out swipes.

> I genuinely wonder if the people inside Anthropic actually communicate with each other like that. Has it been imprinted with Dario's engrams?

Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer.

Don't be curmudgeonly [...] don't be rigidly or generically negative.

Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work.

And as to the substance your comment has:

> Claude (in particular) is a terrible writer.

Frontier models (Claude in particular) are better writers than 90% of the population, even at default style. They're not great, but they're better than that of everyone I know who aren't ultra-educated white-collar workers.

Either your assertion that frontier models are "terrible" writers is false, or you're claiming that 90% of people are "terrible" at writing, which is rather condescending and elitist.

Re: I-have-ADHD: A skill to stop coding agents from burying the answer

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've identified a load-bearing problem and it's worth naming

If I read "load-bearing", "pin", "wedge", "rung", or "it's worse than what I'd previously stated" one more fucking time from Opus...

sharp, appreciate the pushback.

Re: I-have-ADHD: A skill to stop coding agents from burying the answer

#246
post #71

Let's face it. Claude (in particular) is a terrible writer. There's a whole cottage industry of skills and CLAUDE.md instructions trying to push it toward writing better, but each new model iteration seems expressly designed to override all that so that it can load up its writing with unnecessary participle phrases, not-this-but-thats, burying the lede, and other nonsense. I genuinely wonder if the people inside Anth…

Your comment quite badly violates the HN guidelines. You should review them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > "Let's face it" "terrible writer" "other nonsense" "do Anthropic people actually talk like that" "Dario's engrams" Be kind. Don't be snarky. Edit out swipes. > I genuinely wonder if the people inside Anthropic actually communicate with each other like that. Has it been imprinted with Dario's…

Jesus dude ... its an LLM, it's not going to fuck you.

Re: I-have-ADHD: A skill to stop coding agents from burying the answer

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you suggest it do that? Take a simple example. "I found three issues." How would you phrase that without an "I"? "Three issues were found" doesn't tell you who/what found them. Was it the AI itself? Was it a command line tool it ran? I'm fine with conversational interfaces using "I". It makes the grammar easier and more clear. Strong emphasis here on conversational interfaces. I don't want a compiler to say…

“I found these issues.” Could be easily written as “These issues surfaced.”. Do you need to point out the finder of the issues? Easy. “Tool x ran for x amount of time and surfaced these issues…” “Parsing x code surfaced these issues.” I don’t understand why are people pretending like the English language is incapable of transmitting information without personal pronouns when every program under the sun has always bee…

But that's a lot more words than "I found these issues". I also don't particularly care that 'Tool x ran for x amount of time', I don't want it re-telling me that -- I've probably been sitting there watching it do that, so I already know.

Then again, I just dont have an issue with the 'I-isms'; it's a bit weird sure, but at the same time it's a bit more pleasant to interact with as well. After all it is trying to model itself as a person you're talking to.

Re: I-have-ADHD: A skill to stop coding agents from burying the answer

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I found these issues.” Could be easily written as “These issues surfaced.”. Do you need to point out the finder of the issues? Easy. “Tool x ran for x amount of time and surfaced these issues…” “Parsing x code surfaced these issues.” I don’t understand why are people pretending like the English language is incapable of transmitting information without personal pronouns when every program under the sun has always bee…

But that's a lot more words than "I found these issues". I also don't particularly care that 'Tool x ran for x amount of time', I don't want it re-telling me that -- I've probably been sitting there watching it do that, so I already know. Then again, I just dont have an issue with the 'I-isms'; it's a bit weird sure, but at the same time it's a bit more pleasant to interact with as well. After all it is trying to mod…

[deleted]

Re: I-have-ADHD: A skill to stop coding agents from burying the answer

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I struggle the most with is getting it to stop referring to itself with personal pronouns. No Claude, you are not an “I” you are an “it”. You are a fucking tool, dammit. Tell me what you did without trying to assume personality; stop impersonating humans you steroidal autocorrect.

That is what you struggle with the most? Are you kidding me? English has no distinct personal pronoun for an "it". "I" has to be used for grammar to be attributive. There's quite literally no alternative without using passive voice for everything, which is miserable to read and creates ambiguity on if the speaker (it) did something or something happened to have been done, which then requires entire sentences to clari…

Yeah, that is what I struggle the most with because there is simply no easy or effective way to make it stop.

Why would you ever think I don’t know personal pronouns serve grammatical purpose? How did you even arrive at that topic? You seem to be missing the point entirely, and I believe quite on purpose given your snarky childish opener.

Entire operating systems stay clear from assuming personality when presenting information or performing actions. Not a single dialogue in my OS refers to itself as “I” when carrying out instructions and reporting back. Why should Claude do it when I don’t want it to and it doesn’t NEED to do so? Why am I not empowered to simply tell it to stop doing that and it obeys? Better yet, why are you thinking yourself on such high horse about this?

> You're getting upset at a toaster for ringing a bell to notify the toast is done. "Toasters aren't bell ringers!?"

If my toaster starts referring to itself as a person, calling out “I made your toast!!” I’ll get mad at it too. I don’t want it to talk or refer to itself as a person. But then again this is not about toasters. This is about AIs being deliberately designed to sound human-like so marketing can lean on the “I” bit of “AI” more heavily and make gullible people think this steroidal information aggregator actually possess the capacity to think and reason, and, consequently, drive sales.

But then again I’d venture a guess that you’re fully aware of all of this, given your opening snidey remark, and are purposefully choosing to be contrarian to be the point of going off on tangents that make 0 sense or have no impact in the discussion whatsoever.

Still, just goes to show how effective this whole thing is in tricking people into thinking it is normal for a tool to think itself a person.

Ignorance, bliss, and all that.

Re: I-have-ADHD: A skill to stop coding agents from burying the answer

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want it to use nothing. Use impersonal statements. Say “X was changed for Y” not “I changed X for Y”. As any tool would. Finder doesn’t ask “Do you want ME to delete this file?”. Photoshop doesn’t ask “Do you want ME to save this file?”. Claude shouldn’t assume itself to be a person either. > You could be writing from the perspective of a slab of concrete and you'd use "I". Except this isn’t prose. Claude is not te…

Yeah okay, but if you want no pronouns at all then I think your comparison to "it" just confuses the issue. In the contexts where you would use "it", the "it" should use "I". But I don't think I share your preference either. It's a lot easier to talk about what I decided to do and what the machine 'decided' to do if we attach pronouns. "X was changed" can be too vague.

> In the contexts where you would use "it", the "it" should use "I".

At this point you’re just arguing semantics for the sake of it. You know damn well what I mean and if you need more proof that it is perfectly possible and not at all unreasonable to want this just look at most software around you. None them talk like they are a person and those that do are often the most obnoxious and painful to use.

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