alt Hacker NewsClaude Code Is Being Dumbed Down
Comments
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/8477
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/15263
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/9099
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/8371
It's very clear that Anthropic doesn't really want to expose the secret sauce to end users. I have to patch Claude every release to bring this functionality back.
Claude's brand is sliding dangerously close to "the Microsoft of AI."
DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS
I write mainly out of the hope that some Anthropic employees read this: you need an internal crusade to fight these impulses. Take the high road in the short-term and you may avoid being disrupted in the long-term. It's a culture issue.
Probably your strongest tool is specifically educating people about the history. Microsoft in the late 90s and early 00s was completely dominant, but from today's perspective it's very clear: they made some fundamental choices that didn't age well. As a result, DX on Windows is still not great, even if Visual Studio has the best features, and people with taste by and large prefer Linux.
Apple made an extremely strategic choice: rebuild the OS around BSD, which set them up to align with Linux (the language of servers). The question is: why? Go find out.
The difference is a matter of sensibility, and a matter of allowing that sensibility to exist and flourish in the business.
I’m a heavy Claude code user and it’s pretty clear they’re starting to bend under their vibe coding. Each Claude code update breaks a ton of stuff, has perf issues, etc.
And then this. They want to own your dev workflow and for some reason believe Claude code is special enough to be closed source. The react TUI is kinda a nightmare to deal with I bet.
I will say, very happy with the improvements made to Codex 5.3. I’ve been spending A LOT more time with codex and the entire agent toolchain is OSS.
Not sure what anthropic’s plan is, but I haven’t been a fan of their moves in the past month and a half.
I'm old, so I remember when Skyrim came out. At the time, people were howling about how "dumbed down" the RPG had become compared to previous versions. They had simplified so many systems. Seemed to work out for them overall.
I understand the article writers frustration. He liked a thing about a product he uses and they changed the product. He is feeling angry and he is expressing that anger and others are sharing in that.
And I'm part of another group of people. I would notice the files being searched without too much interest. Since I pay a monthly rate, I don't care about optimizing tokens. I only care about the quality of the final output.
I think the larger issue is that programmers are feeling like we are losing control. At first we're like, I'll let it auto-complete but no more. Then it was, I'll let it scaffold a project but not more. Each step we are ceding ground. It is strange to watch someone finally break on "They removed the names of the files the agent was operating on". Of all of the lost points of control this one seems so trivial. But every camels back has a breaking point and we can't judge the straw that does it.
And they hate that people are using different agents (like opencode) with their subscription - to the extent that they have actively been trying to block it.
With stupidity like this what do they expect? It’s only a matter of time before people jump ship entirely.
There are a lot of non developer claude code users these days. The hype about vibe coding lets everyone think they can now be an engineer. Problem is if anthropic caters to that crowd the devs that are using it to do somewhat serious engineering tasks and don't believe in the "run an army of parallel agents and pray" methodology are being alienated.
Maybe Claude Code web or desktop could be targeted to these new vibe coders instead? These folks often don't know how simple bash commands work so the terminal is the wrong UX anyway. Bash as a tool is just very powerful for any agentic experience.
All my information about this is being based on feels, because debugging isn't really feasible. Verbose mode is a mess, and there's no alternative.
It still does what I need so I'm okay with it, but I'm also on the $20 plan so it's not that big of a worry for me.
I did sense that the big wave of companies is hitting Anthropic's wallet. If you hadn't realized, a LOT of companies switched to Claude. No idea why, and this is coming from someone who loves Claude Code.
Anyway, getting some transparency on this would be nice.
They don’t seem to realize that doing vibe coding requires enough information to get the vibes.
There are no vibes in “I am looking at files and searching for things” so I have zero weight to assign to your decision quality up until the point where it tells me the evals passed at 100%.
Your agent is not good enough. I trust it like I trust a toddler not to fall into a swimming pool. It’s not trying to, but enough time around the pool and it is going to happen, so I am watching the whole time, and I might even let it fall in if I think it can get itself out.
For a general tool that has such a broad user base, the output should be configurable. There's no way a single config, even with verbose mode, will satisfy everyone.
Set minimal defaults to keep output clean, but let users pick and choose items to output across several levels of verbosity, similar to tcpdump, Ansible, etc. (-v to -vvvvv).
I know businesses are obsessed with providing Apple-like "experiences", where the product is so refined there's just "the one way" to magically do things, but that's not going to work for a coding agent. It needs to be a unix-like experience, where the app can be customized to fit your bespoke workflow, and opening the man page does critical damage unless you're a wizard.
LLMs are already a magic box, which upsets many people. It'll be a shame if Anthropic alienates their core fan base of SWEs by making things more magical.
It's pretty interesting to watch AI companies start to squeeze their users as the constraints (financial, technical, capacity-wise) start to squeeze the companies.
Ads in ChatGPT. Removing features from Claude Code. I think we're just beginning to face the music. It's also funny that how Google "invented" ad injection in replies with real-time auction capabilities, yet OpenAI would be the first implementer of it. It's similar to how transformers played out.
For me, that's another "popcorn time". I don't use any of these to any capacity, except Gemini, which I seldom use to ask stuff when deep diving in web doesn't give any meaningful results. The last question I asked managed to return only one (but interestingly correct) reference, which I followed and continued my research from there.
I absolutely love reading thoughts and see the commands it uses. It teaches me new stuff, and I think this is what young people need: be able to know WHAT it is doing and WHY it is doing it. And have the ability to discuss with another agent about what the agent and me are trying to archive, and we can ask them questions we have without disturbing the flow, but seeing the live output.
Regarding the thoughts: it also allows me to detect problematic paths it takes, like when it can't find a file.
For example today I was working on a project that depends on another project, managed by another agent. While refactoring my code it noticed that it needs to see what this command is which it is invoking, so it even went so far as to search through vs code's user data to find the recent files history if it can find out more about that command... I stopped it and told it that if it has problems, it should tell me. It explained it can't find that file, i gave it the paths and tokens were saved. Note that in that session I was manually approving all commands, but then rejected the one in the data dir.
Why dumb it down?
Hey... I have been experimenting with Claude for a few days, and am not thrilled with it compared to web chatbots. I suspect this is partly me being new and unskilled with it, but this is a general summary.
ChatGPT or Gemini: I ask it what I wish to do, and show it the relevant code. It gives me a often-correct answer, and I paste it into my program.
Claude: I do the same, and it spends a lot of time thinking. When I check the window for the result, it's stalled with a question... asking to access a project or file that has nothing to do with the problem, and I didn't ask it to look for. Repeat several times until it solves the problem, or I give up with the questions.
Meanwhile GPT-5.3-Codex which just released recently is a huge change and much better. It now displays intermediate thinking summaries instead of being silent.
Sounds like the compacting issue.
> Compacting fails when the thread is very large
> We fixed it.
> No you did not
> Yes now it auto compacts all messages.
> Ok but we don't want compaction when the thread isn't large, plus, it still fails when the compacted thread is too large
> ...
> That’s it. “Read 3 files.” Which files? Doesn’t matter.
It doesn't say "Read 3 files." though - it says "Read 3 files (ctrl+o to expand)" and you press ctrl+o and it expands the output to give you the detail.
It's a really useful feature to increase the signal to noise ratio where it's usually safe to do so.
I suspect the author simply needs to enable verbose mode output.
This was really useful; sometimes, by a glance, you'd see Claude looking at the wrong files or searching the wrong patterns, and would be able to immediately interrupt it. For those of us who like to be deeply involved in what Claude is doing, those updates were terribly disappointing.
Absolutely worse than dumbed down, 4.6 is a mess. Ask it the simplest of questions, look away, and come back to 700 parallel tool uses. https://old.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1r1cfha/is_anyone...
Working at Microsoft, I've just now hooked up to Claude Code (my department was not permitted to use it previously), through something called "Agent Maestro", a vscode extension which I guess pipes claude code API requets to our internally hosted Claude models, including Opus 4.6.
I do wonder if there is going to be much of a difference between using Claude Code vs. Copilot CLI when using the same models.
Anthropic is optimizing for enterprise contracts, not hacker cred. This is what happens when you take VC money and need to sell to Fortune 500s. The "dumbing down" is just the product maturing beyond the early adopter phase.
I also found this change annoying.
Often a codebase ends up with non-authoritative references for things (e.g. docs out of sync with implementation, prototype vs "real" version), and the proper solution is to fix and/or document that divergence. But let's face it, that doesn't always happen. When the AI reads from the wrong source it only makes things worse, and when you can't see what it's reading it's harder to even notice that it's going off track.
This shows one problem here: a private entity controls Claude Code. You can reason that it brings benefits (perhaps), but to me it feels wrong to allow my thinking or writing code be controlled by a private entity. Perhaps I have been using Linux for too long - I may turn into RMS 2.0 (not really though, I like BSD/MIT licences too).
Vibe-coders griping about Claude's vibe-coded CLI hits all the right vibes.
LOL, no, dumbing down was when I paid two months of subscription with the model literally struggling to write basic functions. Something Anthropic eventually acknowledged but offered no refunds for. https://ilikekillnerds.com/2025/09/09/anthropic-finally-admi...
I care A LOT about the details, and I couldn't care less that they're cleaning up terminal output like this.
We're having a UI argument about a workflow problem.
We treat a stateless session like a colleague, then get upset when it forgets our preferences. Anthropic simplified the output because power users aren't the growth vector. This shouldn't surprise anyone.
The fix isn't verbose mode. It's a markdown file the model reads on startup — which files matter, which patterns to follow, what "good" looks like. The model becomes as opinionated as your instructions. The UI becomes irrelevant.
The model is a runtime. Your workflow is the program. Arguing about log verbosity is a distraction.
My last experience with Claude support was a fun merry go round.
I had used a Visa card to buy monthly Pro subscription. One day I ran out of credits so I go to buy extra credit. But my card is declined. I recheck my card limit and try again. Still declined.
To test the card I try extending the Pro subscription. It works. That's when I notice that my card has a security feature called "Secure by Visa". To complete transaction I need to submit OTP on a Visa page. I am redirected to this page while buying Pro subscription but not when trying to buy extra usage.
I open a ticket and mention all the details to Claude support. Even though I give them the full run down of the issue, they say "We have no way of knowing why your card was declined. You have to check with your bank".
Later I get hold of a Mastercard with similar OTP protection. It is called Mastercard Securecode. The OTP triggers on both subscription and extra usage page.
I share this finding with support as well. But the response is same - "We checked with our engineering team and we have no way of knowing why the other Visa card was declined. You have to check with your bank".
I just gave up trying to buy extra usage. So, I am not really surprised if they keep making the product worse.
> “Read 3 files.” Which files?
> “Searched for 1 pattern.”
Hit Ctrl-o like it mentions right there, and Claude Code will show you. Or RTFM and adjust Output Styles[1]. If you don't like these things, you can change them.
Like it or not, agentic coding is going mainstream and so they are going to tailor the default settings toward that wider mainstream audience.
I don't get why people cling to the Claude Code abusive relationship. It's got so many issues, it's getting worse, and it's clear that there's no plan to make it open for patching.
Meanwhile OpenCode is right there. (despite Anthropic efforts, you can still use it with a subscription) And you can tweak it any way you want...
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/24537
Seems like a dashboard mode toggle to run in a dedicated terminal would be a good candidate to move some of this complexity Anthropic seems to think “most” users can’t handle. When your product is increasing cognitive load the answer isn’t always to remove the complexity entirely. That decision in this case was clearly the wrong one.
Give me my local models so I can write a locally handcrafted tool that does what I want, goddamit.
Strong meme game. I'm on an older release and now I'm reluctant to update. In my current release, the verbosity is just where I want it and control-o is there when I really need it.
claude code is big enough now that it really needs a preview / beta release channel where features like this can be tested against a smaller audience before being pushed out.
as a regular and long-term user, it's frequently jarring being pushed new changes / bugs in what has become a critical tool.
surprised their enterprise clients haven't raised this
It's nerfed to a point that it feels more like lawyer than a coding assistant now. We were arguing about an 3rd party API ToU for 1 hour last night. VSC Copilot executed it within 1 minute.
RooCode is a better version of ClaudeCode than ClaudeCode.
No affiliation, just a fan.
can't you write some tool to display the files being read with the inotify system call?
Usually I hate programming but it feels like a nice little tool to create
I really dislike this trend that unfortunately has become, well, a trend. And has followers. Namely, let's simplify to "reduce noise" and "not overwhelm users", because "the majority of users don't need…".
This is spreading like a plague: browser address bars are being trimmed down to nothing. Good luck figuring out which protocol you're using, or soon which website you are talking to. The TLS/SSL padlock is gone, so is the way to look into the site certificate (good luck doing that on recent Safari versions). Because users might be confused.
Well the users are not as dumb as you condescendingly make them out to be.
And if you really want to hide information, make it a config setting. Ask users if they want "dumbo mode" and see if they really do.
My biggest beef in recent versions is the automatic use of generic built in skills. I hate it when I ask a simple question and it says "OK! Time to use the RESEARCHING_CRAZY_PROBLEM skill! I'll kickstart the 20 step process!" when before it would just answer the question.
You can control this behavior, so it's not a dealbreaker. But it shows a sort of optimism that skills make everything better. My experience is that skills are only useful for specific workflows, not as a way to broadly or generally enhance the LLM.
Perhaps some power user of Claude Code can enlighten me here, but why not just using OpenCode? I admit I've only briefly tried Claude Code, so perhaps there are unique features there stopping the switch, or some other form of lock-in.
If you're not vibecoding your own UX to render CC's output the way you like it, you're not living.
It was because of the (back then) new Haiku model, maybe 3.5, that i decided to subscribe yearly. more than good enough for a language layer to interact with the mcp server. Now I'm even hesitant to use it.
So much for human replacement.
Map it to a workplace:
- Hey Joe, why did you stop adding code diff to your review requests?
- Most reviewers find it simpler. You can always run tcpdump on our shared drive to see what exactly was changed.
- I'm the only one reviewing your code in this company...
I'm not sure this is a regression, at least how I use it - you can hit control + o to expand, and usually the commands it runs show the file path(s) it's using, and I'm really paranoid with it, and I didn't even notice this change.
It's clear we're seeing the same code-vs-craft divergence play out as before, just at a different granularity.
Codex/Claude would like you to ignore both the code AND the process of creating the code.
Everyone, file your own ticket (check the box saying you searched for existing tickets anyway)!
After the Anthropic PMs have to delete their hundredth ticket about this issue, they will feel the need to fix it ... if only to stop the ticket deluge!
I have noticed, if I hit my session quota before it resets, that Claude gets "sleepy" for a day or so afterward. It's demonstrably worse at tasks...especially complex ones. My cofounder and I have both noticed this.
Our theory is that Claude gets limited if you meet some threshold of power usage.
This "intervening" people are mentioning in these issues, does it stop the execution on the backend or just cause the client to stop listening to it?
The histrionic tone is annoying but this is actually a feature failure. The utility of seeing what files were being read is I could help direct its use if it goes down the wrong pathway. I use a monorepo so that's an easy mistake for the software to make.
> That’s it. “Read 3 files.” Which files? Doesn’t matter. “Searched for 1 pattern.” What pattern? Who cares.
Product manager here. Cynically, this is classic product management: simplify and remove useful information under the guise of 'improving the user experience' or perhaps minimalism if you're more overt about your influences.
It's something that as an industry we should be over by now.
It requires deep understanding of customer usage in order not to make this mistake. It is _really easy_ to think you are making improvements by hiding information if you do not understand why that information is perceived as valuable. Many people have been taught that streamlining and removal is positive. It's even easier if you have non-expert users getting attention. All of us here at HN will have seen UIs where this has occurred.