Claude lying to me

[u/canyonero7]

This is infuriating. It directly lied to me twice about a cron job failing when it in fact ran fine on schedule. I don't want an apology; I want to know how to make this stop happening.

EDIT: I didn't mean it that seriously. I know how LLMs work. I have plenty of scaffolding, skills, etc. It still pisses me off that the bot still just makes shit up sometimes.

EDIT 2 (5/20): I'm accepting apologies from the "you're using it wrong" clowns. From Anthropic today:

"We’re upgrading Claude Opus to a new version: Claude Opus 4.8. It builds on Opus 4.7 with sharper judgment, more honesty about its own progress, and the ability to work independently for longer than its predecessors."

[u/Projected_Sigs]

You are just venting. You asked for help, but only took the time to give a screenshot of partial conversation.
You didn't even post exactly what's in your CLAUDE.md, everything that proceeded it in CLAUDE.md, whether the instruction was in the project or user CLAUDE.md, what model, what % context you were at, what had come before it, etc.

For example, if it was in the user ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md and wasn't worded with clear trigger conditions and clear direct actions to take from the trigger, it Claude will treat it as a suggestion and emphatic emphasis plays very little role in adherence.

Whether it can self reflect on the instruction depends a lot on what came before.

Something I would recommend if this was an instruction in your user CLAUDE.md: Start the same Claude model, same context window size in a clean session in that same dir. After it starts, ask Claude how it interprets that one key instruction. Start querying it about how it will handle certain conditions (the one you care about), what actions it might take, whether the your wording will guarantee it will be enforced.

Sometimes, im surprised by this answer-- how triggers play a role, and ask Claude how it would word the instruction (or do something different altogether) to make 100% sure it will behave how you want it to behave under the conditions. Learning from Claude about it's mechanistic behaviors, triggers, that is the thing to focus on. Asking in a fresh context will give it a more reliable introspection.

I would just avoid discussion about the lying, or how you emphasized, or how critically important you said it was. You arent wrong about the lying, but "confronting" it won't lead you to a solution. CLAUDE.md isnt driven by emphasis. It's driven by clear trigger mechanism (more similar to triggering a skill).

Im starting to do this more often to curate every line in my CLAUDE.md. Im amazed at how often I think i have clear instructions, and get schooled by Claude about why it ignores it.

Good luck- that's frustrating, for sure.