Claudette: Make Claude Stop Talking Like a BuzzFeed Article

I use multiple AI tools simultaneously, and I feel that Claude has gradually adopted a more explanatory tone following updates around March and July. As for loss of context, it’s particularly problematic and can occur after just a few back-and-forth exchanges. The user experience changes with every update for every AI tool, so I feel there are more downsides to sticking with the same one indefinitely.

I've started giving these instructions and I think I've been much more successful in generating clear output:

Comment blocks are <= 7 words, function names <= 4 words. User-facing message strings should be <= 10 words. Use an active voice, no stage performances, and pick the most common word when choosing among alternatives.

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.

Has 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.

It's such a sad indictment of Anthropic's product that so many people hate interacting with it. Claude is on its way to the Microsoft Teams zone of hatred.

Related and recent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49375996

"Vomit: Clean up Claude 5's token output with a separate LLM" (github.com/zachahn)

285 points | 23 hours ago | 288 comments

Everybody is complaining about this, at this point I’m sure they will deliver a tone of voice change in the 5.1 releases. Possibly with a new set of problems though, especially if this is part of an effort to obscure thinking to reduce distillation efficacy. In that case I believe Anthropic is doing damage to themselves. Caring about the quality of your product is the best strategy, the competition will come no matter what.

> For humans output writing at a 10th grade reading level.

I put it at the top of CLAUDE.md. I wonder if I put at a 8th grade level, it would be less of a cognitive load.

this isn't just necessary, it's mandatory. that's the difference.

Why couldn't this just be a skill that Claude and Codex could work with instead of something that has to go through Gemini, again?

Just stop using Claude. There are so many other better models right now.

Upvoting if for nothing else than the intro paragraph to the repo. That was hilarious and so true.

Oh my gosh it drove me so nuts I switched to GLM5.3, and it was a breath of fresh air.

I wish I didn't need it, but the way Claude talks can get pretty tiresome. I've often wondered why it talks like that. Was it really trained on Buzzfeed? Is Gemini really that much better?

To avoid these Claudisms, I asked Claude to add instructions to my AGENTS.md. The first line it added:

  Avoid the stock LLM register.

i hate claude writing a lot, especially after opus 4.8 and it's even worse in 5. in many cases, it feels like playing whac-a-mole and you just can't get rid of all those obvious ai writing patterns.

why do you choose gemini? imo this is a fundamental problem of all frontier ai models.

You can use a cheap model in another pane, and ask it what Claude said.

I prefer this since everyone has their own preference for how the output should sound and it's very simple and transparent. And you can easily ask follow-ups.

It can be via tmux, or herdr, because it can read the pane.

Or it can use a hook to read the conversation file. I call it `backseat-driver`

I sometimes use it as a proxy when fable genuinely does a good job, but is too difficult to understand.

I let the translator know it's role and anything I say it should forward with better context.

I don't swear at it anymore, but I'd often say "just do it, retard", and the translator would actually steer it in a useful manner.

I've been using OpenAI ever since Anthropic blocked third party clients. Can't believe people are putting up with that output.

https://x.com/ClaudeDevs/status/2090245922685063634

Haven't tried, because I have just been using 4.6 since 5 was released.

Or just use a competitor instead of being a slave to this abuse? Why are people so wedded to Anthropic?

I have grown tired of Codex/GPT's writing style, too, but it's not nearly as bad. It's terse and factual by default. Even better if you use the "simple english" skill.

I actually found that GLM 5.x is the best in terms of editing documentation. It's still best to write things by hand to give your own organic voice, though. And not insult your readers.

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Fix: Just switch to OpenAI, Grok, or other LLM's. They provide better performance and respond with 5 sentences. They also don't lecture you when you get angry.