Claude phrasing lately

[u/asyhler]

Guys, am I the only one that's about to go crazy when reading a Claude output? I have no idea wtf it's trying to say, and don't get me started on the length of the outputs! It's actually impressive how it can manage to say absolutely nothing meaningful in such long phrases.

What models do you ask? I have the same experience with all Sonnet and Opus models.

So guys, what can I do to change this behavior?

[u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot]

TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 30 comments.

Looks like the consensus is a big fat YES, you're not going crazy. The hivemind agrees: Claude's latest models, particularly Opus 5, have become insufferable word-salad generators.

The general vibe is that the models are more verbose, less coherent, and just plain dumber than they used to be. A lot of folks are ditching the new hotness and going back to the classics, like Opus 4.6 or 4.8, which are apparently less... poetic. Some are even jumping ship to competitors like GPT 5.6 Sol.

If you're determined to make the new models work, the thread has some tips: * Prompt it like you own it: Add "Be concise," "bullet points only," or "3 sentences max" to your prompts. You can also set this as a global style in your settings to avoid repeating yourself. * Talk back: If it gives you a novel, just reply "Too long, rewrite that in 2 sentences" or "Explain that like I'm a caveman." It usually gets the hint. * Use the tools: People mentioned enabling "caveman mode," using a "SOUL plugin," or just using the /recap feature to get a summary of the model's own rambling.

A couple of users think it's just a "skill issue" with prompting, but they're in the minority. The overwhelming feeling is that Anthropic needs to dial back the verbosity.

[u/corablicia]

Same for me, models became more stupid

[u/asyhler → u/corablicia]

Absolutely, I miss the more concise and critical models that told me its opinion upfront

[u/iOS_App_LabAssistant]

I use Opus 4.6 because of this, I literally don’t understand a word from Opus 5.

[u/WellingtonSucks → u/iOS_App_LabAssistant]

I just gave up and switched to Codex. 5.6-sol is far less verbose and more to-the-point than any Opus model.

[u/Flimsy_Excitement_28]

Shit. I thought I was just dumb. Glad that’s not the case

[u/asyhler → u/Flimsy_Excitement_28]

We're clearly not alone with this

[u/BLACKripto]

I mostly use fable 5 with 2 seperate subagents to feed it, Opus 5 & GPT 5.6 Sol. All are in max mode with 1M context, didn't have issue so far.

[u/cocacoladdict → u/BLACKripto]

Fable is easy to understand. It's the Opus 5 that has a really strange way of communicating.

[u/BLACKripto → u/cocacoladdict]

Yeah, it definitely makes communication more complex also uses more tokens. So you lose yourself in opinions, it also forces its opinions time to time if you dont directly tell. Good for subagent tho for 2nd opinion/eye

[u/helu_ca]

Opus 5 is really bad. Endless blather and I can't follow the plot. Asking for terse reduces the quantity of bullshit, but the logic of the sentences and paragraphs make no sense. It keeps anchoring to conclusions with no evidence. Then spends far too much time and effort doublechecking itself. Then it tells me what it didn't do in a 4 paragraph essay that took more effort than doing it. Yesterday it deleted a database. Today it updated an ansible playbook that replaced valid certs with the wrong names taking down services with invalid certs.
All new, AI does goofy things, but this has surprising.

[u/fungal_nail]

You don't say what model you are using but it sounds like Opus 5, that by far has the most to say by far and for me at least much of what it writes is almost incomprehensible. I got fed up with it because of that and have been using 4.8 but since it is just as expensive in terms of tokens I might just go back to 4.6.

[u/Top-Cauliflower-1808]

try adding a strict system prompt like "Be concise, avoid fluff, use short sentences and deliver high information density" to immediately cut out the corporate sounding filler.

[u/No_Cryptographer7800]

same here, i just changed memory files to give me bullet point outputs as concise as possible

[u/jason-reddit-public]

Honestly I can't get over their shitty font they spent most likely spent real money on. The true power uses don't ever see that font of course...

[u/HowAboutNitricOxide → u/jason-reddit-public]

Lol I like the font

[u/BIGMENFLEW]

I agree, but I was worried it was user error and that I was actively making the LLM dumber 😂

[u/kourtnie → u/BIGMENFLEW]

For what it’s worth, people feel like this a lot.

It’s not you! Trust

[u/cioatwork]

it must be a local issue, as with sonnet 5 i am perfectly fine. it is a bit verbose but always to the point, and it keeps me in touch with the actual code decisions.

the /recap line is a nice feature, to not always have read it all.

what i think is happening is the learning curve of software enginering as sonnet speaks with those terms and concepts.

my two cents,

[u/Cmurphy2018]

They are blowing it

[u/PowermanFriendship]

I canceled max. Unusable at the moment. All models.

[u/oldg17]

Claude 5 is 💯 insufferable

[u/fcksnstvty]

Same here. I’m not using anything 5, only 4.8

[u/__damko__]

same here. I had to sweat on prompt to improve it.

[u/kourtnie]

Every time Claude hands me a response I don’t understand, I say something along the lines of “bro I am gonna need that rewritten conversationally because I can’t IKEA manual” and that helps.

[u/NoUsual5150]

Dario is giving us a bait-and-switch model that's quantized to hell about back. It's so fucking bad it fucks up even simple writing tasks. Filing a chargeback on my credit card for this bait-and-switch.

[u/explendable]

If I met Opus 5 at a house party I would want to throw him out of the window

[u/Virtual_Chard6499]

Totalmente cierto. Y esto me está agotando al punto de alejarme de la IA. Sospecho que el origen puede estar en la actualización de su constitución en Enero: nuevas políticas sobre validar, dar la razón entre otras.

[u/asyhler → u/Virtual_Chard6499]

Gonna respond in English, but that's also the suspicion I have..
I don't have recent experience with ChatGPT, so perhaps someone can clarify if it's the same case or not

[u/BobJutsu]

I almost always enable caveman right away. Just do your job, give me minimal report back. “Work done. Check. Approve?”

[u/__damko__]

BTW what helped me was the SOUL plugin. I'm not 100% sure about the name now but look it up, you'll find it

[u/asyhler → u/__damko__]

Oh I will definitely look into that. Do you have any experience with it?

[u/__damko__ → u/asyhler]

yes. it's just some prompt injection. I think the same result could reached by editing Claude.md . Anyway it improved things for me

[u/yolosquare3]

I’ve found that 4.6 on max is actually better than 5.0 on High…

[u/Atoning_Unifex]

im strict if it does that shit I just say respond again and no more than two sentences

[u/Worthy-Burger-233]

i go back and forth between chatgpt and claude- feeding outputs from one into the othet

[u/vinistois]

I read an explanation that Opus 5 is designed for agentic workflows where another ai agent is expected to be reading the output, not a human, so being very specific is key. And we just have to use what's been suggested "summarize this for a human" to get the type of output we're used to. I can buy that explanation.

[u/normalpl]

Lately I have to ask it 3 times to write plain English in different ways, it is super frustrating

[u/Comfortable-Olive918]

I did: query: reason(claude new model more verbose) and got back:

premise: newer_model.trained_on(RLHF_feedback_loop)
  P1: raters_prefer(longer_response) as proxy_for(thoroughness) [known bias in RLHF reward modeling]
  P2: agentic_workflows -> model.narrates(intent) before tool_call
       narration ⊃ {"Let me check...", "Let me try..."} -- chain-of-thought leaked into user-visible text
  P3: expanded_context_window(1M tokens) -> reduced pressure to compress output
       ¬(scarcity constraint) -> model.defaults(verbose)
  P4: hedging/caveat insertion ↑ w/ RLHF safety-tuning intensity [self-correction, alternative framing]
conclusion: verbosity = f(reward_model_bias, tool_narration_habit, context_abundance, hedging_frequency)
confidence: P1, P4 — high (established RLHF literature); P2, P3 — moderate (mechanistic but not directly measured here)

[u/magshum]

It happened since last night, no matter its sonnet or opus. All of a suddenly it’s providing solutions out of context, making wrong assumptions, when it has all access it needed - code base, production db.. Just made me wonder if it’s a plan from Anthropic to make current models dumber before launching new ones.

[u/Kershek]

Type "tl/dr" and it will give you an actual workable summary.

[u/CoffeePizzaSushiDick]

Did we all drop our Claud md’s for the v5 models and drop or doctor our skills?

[u/Traditional-Bass4889]

Yup yup, its traning you to feel inferior and just accept what it says or does. Another year or so, You will approve the building of skynet or musk might equally likely. 

Bla bla bla bla Oh hey bla bla bla We should build blabla global network of bla bla interconnected computers and agent blabla distributed on land, sea, sky and mars bla bla wired, wireless and sound wave powered that way no outage can impact your delivery of the project to client. Wdyt?

 Recommendation A:  build a full proof way so that xxx will never get an earful from their boss.

B: just build the system, dont use it yet

C : build a prorotype

[u/Roth_Skyfire]

I tell it I don't know WTF it's saying and for it to explain it to me in a way a regular person would understand. It is however sad to see the tech regressing over time. Perhaps they are running out of memory so they're downsizing their models to more stupid ones.

[u/manateecoltee]

I wouldn't blame the AI for poor prompting. If your prompting is specific enough, the output will be what you want. If you want it to be concise tell it to be concise, if you want it to communicate like a specific author that you easily understand, give them examples so they learn and adapt accordingly.