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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

#51
post #8

As a person who has ADHD, it feels weird when people who obviously do not have it, claim to have it, while there's very little I wouldn't do to "get rid of it" (in quotes because it makes me, me but it's very hard to be me).

Ah yes the old "I have it but you don't"

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

#52
post #8

As a person who has ADHD, it feels weird when people who obviously do not have it, claim to have it, while there's very little I wouldn't do to "get rid of it" (in quotes because it makes me, me but it's very hard to be me).

Same. It started on Tumblr around 15 years ago when people were "self-diagnosing" themselves then it spiraled out of control. It really bothers me because I see a lot of of obviously-not-neurodivergent folks try to use it as an excuse (I am diagnosed formally + can easily detect if someone is just spouting nonsense about it)

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

#55

Claude models are the ones that need this the most and in my experience with this specific skill only maintain the conciseness for a few turns at most before they completely forget and are back to their unfathomable verbosity. That's with it instructed to use it in my sparse global CLAUDE.md and also manually repeating it regularly during sessions. I don't really want to install a hook that runs this on every single…

Claude Code has output styles; one of the predefined styles is Concise [1].

    Concise: Claude leads with the result, skips preamble and narration, and
    keeps responses short by default, while doing the engineering work as
    thoroughly as in the Default style. When you ask for an explanation or
    more detail, Claude answers in full. Claude always keeps the complete
    content of error reports, security warnings, and confirmations for
    destructive actions. Requires Claude Code v2.1.237 or later.
[1]: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/output-styles

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

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain what about is it a gift? What are the benefits you get from it?

I have found both hyperfocus and the ability to quickly "drop" (i.e. distract from) a train of thought incredibly useful.

Hyperfocus is great until it's not.

People with ADHD have "time blindness"; we don't process time the same way most people do.

We often don't realize 3 or 4 hours have passed and there were other things we needed to get done.

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

#57
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have it and it is absolute gift that I wouldn’t trade for anything. It has taken years to figure how to harness it though.

Can you explain what about is it a gift? What are the benefits you get from it?

I would sum it up as an ability to think out of the box, naturally having creative solutions. Which itself is a double-edged sword...

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

#58
I found 2 things helping a lot: 1. Use the desktop app instead of the terminal. It really helps with text readability and structure. 2. Avoid opus 5 - 4.6 and 4.8 work much better. 4.6 being by far the easiest to read and also just a good collaborator, you should try it again. Fable also if you can afford it.

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

#60

Claude models are the ones that need this the most and in my experience with this specific skill only maintain the conciseness for a few turns at most before they completely forget and are back to their unfathomable verbosity. That's with it instructed to use it in my sparse global CLAUDE.md and also manually repeating it regularly during sessions. I don't really want to install a hook that runs this on every single…

Claude Code has output styles; one of the predefined styles is Concise [1]. Concise: Claude leads with the result, skips preamble and narration, and keeps responses short by default, while doing the engineering work as thoroughly as in the Default style. When you ask for an explanation or more detail, Claude answers in full. Claude always keeps the complete content of error reports, security warnings, and confirmatio…

Output styles are just more context (like CLAUDE.md) with a tiny bit more weight. They very much don't force Claude to speak succinctly, no matter what you put in them.
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