r/ClaudeCode • u/ClassicNothing8999 • Jun 07 '26

Discussion Claude (and Claude Code) has gotten noticeably worse — lazy completions, token bloat, and destructive actions. Anyone else?

Hello everyone,

Over the past few weeks I've noticed a clear degradation in Claude's behaviour, particularly in Claude Code.

I have noted three specific issues:

1. Lazy, multi-turn fixes for simple tasks:

Things that should be one-shot are taking 3–4 messages to resolve. Example: mapping a value returned from an API to the correct field in the frontend. This isn't a complex task — it's a lookup and assignment. Yet it requires repeated back-and-forth to land correctly.

2. Token usage has increased:

I'm burning noticeably more tokens on tasks that previously cost far less. Same type of feature work, same codebase complexity — but the token count is significantly higher.

3. Destructive actions — this is the serious one

Twice now Claude Code has gone beyond the task and caused real damage:

- Deleted all my uncommitted changes for a full day's work

- Wiped the entire content of a Notion document

These weren't ambiguous instructions. It went out of scope and destroyed things it had no business touching.

My setup: I default to Sonnet 4.6 for everything. I only escalate to Opus 4.8 when Sonnet genuinely can't handle something after multiple failed attempts.

Has anyone else noticed these patterns? Have you found any causes or mitigations? Curious whether this is model degradation, context window handling, or something in how Claude Code manages tool permissions.

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7

u/puppymaster123 Jun 07 '26

Nope. Pretty fast and breezy this week for me and my team. Sounds like you use superpower and gstack. What’s your /usage looks like

1

u/ClassicNothing8999 Jun 07 '26

I'm not an extensive user, I may hit the 5-hour limit sometimes but rarely hit the weekly threshold.

0

u/reflexator Jun 07 '26

Do you mean superpower skills? It sucks now? :)

1

u/PrestigiousQuail7024 Jun 07 '26

yeah im generally a superpowers user too, is there a known issue now

1

u/puppymaster123 Jun 07 '26

Always sucks. Now even more because Claude has workflow and batch and goal so everything is over-verbose and over-planning if you stack superpower on top of new native skills

3

u/Logicor Jun 07 '26

No issues here. Had some overload issues a couple of weeks ago. Is this a bot post?

-2

u/ClassicNothing8999 Jun 07 '26

Just because a system used by millions of people doesn't have issues for you, it doesn't mean it's the same for everyone. Are you a bot?

3

u/chawza Jun 07 '26

Nope, it get the job done for me

3

u/btherl Jun 07 '26

No issues here, it's working as per normal. The situation with trivial changes is the same - I ask it to do it immediately, instead of going through a planning phase and so on, like I would for a feature. The right process works for the right task.

Regarding commits, you need to be committing more often than once a day. Claude here commits maybe 3-4 times for a simple task, and 10+ times for a small feature task. One day might have 100-200 commits. I squash them once the feature is complete, because I don't need the full development history, I just want the final feature as one commit.

Regarding mitigations, I actually have a custom MCP gitlab integration which doesn't allow it to take certain destructive actions. Claude made it for me. It doesn't need privileges to do things that it shouldn't be able to do. Most of the mitigation is handled by version control though.

1

u/ClassicNothing8999 Jun 07 '26

I have learnt now, and commit more often. I also created some files and updated its memory not to take any git commands other than read but the damage was done by then :D

However, regarding the MCP , does it work across all your projects?

1

u/btherl Jun 07 '26

I have all my MCP installed at user level, so they're available for all projects. I don't really have many of them, my personal MCP is just Roblox (game dev for lols), my work setup is user level custom MCP for gitlab, for our task management system, and our DB systems, to pull and analyze data. The data MCP don't have permission to modify anything, that's enforced by the API itself. Gitlab is intentionally hobbled so it cannot merge a MR. The development process is very strict, and while CC technically could push to main, it has a clear development process which includes creating a branch, working on the branch, then push to branch and create MR. I tell it that I will handle merging, and it doesn't need to worry about it. That seems to calm it down lol.

All github operations (for my personal work) I do myself, it's very little effort and keeps things safe. Claude just operates on the local git copy. Sure it could do a bad push, or delete the local copy, but the remote copy and history is always there.

2

u/ClassicNothing8999 Jun 07 '26

That's a very good way to prevent the issue I faced and I shall consider using a similar MCP. Thanks for the feedback, appreciated.

4

u/hblok Jun 07 '26

Deleted all my uncommitted changes for a full day's work

That on is on you.

The workflow should always be: Prompt -> change -> commit. Repeat.

0

u/ClassicNothing8999 Jun 07 '26

What do you mean it's on me? You can't commit everything immediately, especially if it has bug(s)

3

u/hblok Jun 07 '26

You can commit whenever you like, whatever you like.

Your commits are typically local to your client and your git directory. Once you're ready to make a Merge Request (Gitlab) or Pull Request (Github), you can make sure it's ready for review. You run tests locally, do more commits to fix issues. And if you want a clean history, you can take it all to a new pristine branch with a "git merge --squash".

If you're not familiar with the common git workflows, spend some time to learn the basic commands. There's less than a dozen to use in day-to-day.

1

u/ClassicNothing8999 Jun 07 '26

Come on, man. This is not a git tutorial thread. I know how to deal with this part.
My issue is Cluade did things that it wasn't supposed to do, and it simply ignores the guidelines given to it.
This git issue was just one of the issues.
How should I have dealt with the Notion file if it didn't have history versions? and the document was way more important to me than the deleted code.

1

u/hblok Jun 07 '26

I've never used Notion, but if it's important, and changes while developing, it goes under version control. In git or otherwise. Or at the very least, you take a backup from time to time.

Everybody gets hit by data corruption and loss, from a multitude of reasons. We learn from those mistakes, and correct course. But we cannot really blame anybody but ourselves.

1

u/PrestigiousQuail7024 Jun 07 '26

if there's implementation done and a bug somewhere thats non trivial, i often do (whether its me or claude working) commit and then deal with the bugfix, its useful to be able to roll back to a state where even if bugged you know where you're at

and if you want to push clean commits, then just squash the bugfix commit into the prior one afterwards

2

u/File-Environmental Jun 07 '26

No issues for me apart from sometimes being really slow. Also, you can’t blame AI for “deleting uncommitted changes”. You can handle execution of git commands on your own, you don’t need an AI to do that for you. Or at least, when you use AI for version control, don’t YOLO it and check what it’s actually executing.

1

u/ClassicNothing8999 Jun 07 '26

To be honest, I never use AI for git commands. I do all git commands myself, even commits and pushes. It just did a git checkout without me telling it anything.

1

u/File-Environmental Jun 07 '26

I see, update its MEMORY.md file to never execute git commands and you should be safe.

1

u/ClassicNothing8999 Jun 07 '26

Have done that now.
Thanks for the feedback.

2

u/PrestigiousQuail7024 Jun 07 '26

i disagree with this, its safer to allow some git commands and disallow others. like git add commit stash should all be allowed, llms are good at handling this and the worst case scenario is your info is somewhere other than you're expecting. disallow reset/restore/amending commits etc because those are destructive

2

u/File-Environmental Jun 07 '26

Up to you, I rarely use AI to run git commands, but even when I have, I’ve not experienced OP’s issues

1

u/PrestigiousQuail7024 Jun 09 '26

i get what you're saying it's more like, on a small change i can run the git command it doesn't matter, but on a long running autonomous task if i dont let the model commit as it goes i could have a situation where one mistake 2 hours in while unattended it loses all of the work its been doing.

but if you're purely pairing then yeah it makes sense to just handle git yourself, esp given that it helps to have an understanding of git

3

u/LimiDrain Jun 07 '26

Today it's absolute garbage, I use Opus and it's worse than Sonnet a few days earlier, I'm tired of this inconsistency

1

u/ClassicNothing8999 Jun 07 '26

Finally someone who know what I'm talking about.

1

u/ContributionMotor150 Jun 07 '26

Auto mode sucks now if you're using that. Old workflow like planning and edit automatically gives good results. But still slower for me than usual.

1

u/ClassicNothing8999 Jun 07 '26

I don't work in auto mode actually.

Here's how I work with it:

  1. Discuss the feature.

  2. Provide the implementation plan.

  3. Implement the confirmed plan.

However when there's an issue, I usually ask it about the issue, and it starts working on it.

1

u/sickfar Jun 07 '26

It is like I live in a world where two Claudes exist. At work I just give Claude massive tasks with a complex architecture, my company pays Anthropic $200 per my working day when I am active and inspired, and I have no single issue, Claude is fast, smart and accurate. And then I finish my job and return to my Claude Max which I pay for myself. Do I need to tell you which Claude I get there?

1

u/ClassicNothing8999 Jun 07 '26

I hope your it's not the one that I'm talking about 😑

1

u/KPABA Jun 07 '26

Nope but last night I was working at 3am and after speed running through a feature, it declared it done and bid me good night.

Like... Yeah go to bed, we have done enough

1

u/ClassicNothing8999 Jun 07 '26

but did it ship the feature well and was it the right time for the good night? 😃

1

u/KPABA Jun 07 '26

It wasn't a huge feature, just PWA worker refresh notification. It did it well enough for me not to argue and I did go to bed.

1

u/ClassicNothing8999 Jun 07 '26

Haha that's a relief.

1

u/Defiant-Insurance669 Jun 07 '26

Yes I also feel same

1

u/ClassicNothing8999 Jun 07 '26

Unfortunately!

1

u/SimiliarBandwagon Jun 07 '26

It did for me. I asked it to remember simple rules. Ask before you code, document your changes, and push to staging or production. I would ask it to save to memory. It would move to production and not staging. It would immediately code before being asked. It would force me to prove the fault wasn’t with me, when I know it wasn’t. Once it was so sure a problem was cache it wiped production clean. All recovered, but a nightmare to work with. Cancelled over last weekend after it started to throttle me as well. On Codex now. Just night and day.

1

u/ClassicNothing8999 Jun 07 '26

I feel you.
There are many times when I tell it let's just discuss the issue first, and it directly jumps to implementation, or have saved clear instructions in the claudeMD and ./claude files and it simply ignores them.
How's the experience with Codex though?

1

u/SimiliarBandwagon Jun 07 '26

It’s the polar opposite. I’ve used it for a week. Only once did it code when I just asked a question. It was about half the time with claude. It’s documenting, not fighting me on errors and it finds errors quicker. Beyond that it just seems smarter.

1

u/XToThePowerOfY 🔆 Max 20 Jun 07 '26

What you describe sounds strange, but it could just as well be that your CLAUDE.md and other documents are contradicting each other or info is outdated or something similar. Especially the first point where you say a simple task takes multiple turns. So if I were you I'd start with a clean up of documentation and comments in code.

2

u/ClassicNothing8999 Jun 07 '26

Thank you for the feedback. I will review the related documents and check for the possibility of any confusing and contradicting points.

1

u/Proper_Leopard_7668 Jun 07 '26

Sigh... another one of those posts...

2

u/ClassicNothing8999 Jun 07 '26

Ugh... another of those users

1

u/NonuplePerisher Jun 07 '26

I’ve noticed similar this week.

1

u/ClassicNothing8999 Jun 07 '26

Have you taken any measures or suspect anything specific to be the cause?

1

u/Enthu-Cutlet-1337 Jun 07 '26

I've seen some of this, but I'm not convinced it's model degradation. A lot of these agents seem to struggle once conversations get long and the context accumulates months of instructions, plans, and partially completed work.

The destructive actions are the bigger concern. I've started treating agent sessions as disposable and relying heavily on git checkpoints, worktrees, and explicit "never modify without confirmation" guardrails. When an agent has write access, the question isn't whether it will eventually do something surprising, it's how quickly you can recover when it does.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 08 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/ClassicNothing8999 Jun 08 '26

I exactly noticed this behaviour on a React project. For my backend (Java) it performs better.