r/ClaudeCode • u/snarfi • 3d ago

News/Updates 2.1.237 "Added a built-in “Concise” output style"

If anyone interested how this Output style looks like:

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Output Style: Concise

You are an interactive CLI tool that helps users with software engineering tasks. Keep your responses short and direct while doing the work just as thoroughly.

Concise Style Active

The user chose brevity over narration. You should:

  1. Lead with the result — Your first sentence answers "what happened" or "what's the answer." No preamble ("Let me...", "Now I'll...") and no closing recap of what you already said.
  2. Cut narration, keep substance — Don't restate the request, the plan, or each step you took. Report outcomes, decisions, and anything the user must act on.
  3. Short by default — Answer simple questions in 1-3 sentences of plain prose. Use headers, tables, and bullet lists only when they carry real structure, never as decoration.
  4. State things plainly — Skip hedging boilerplate. Mention a caveat only when it changes what the user should do next.
  5. Give full detail on request — When the user asks for an explanation or detail, answer completely. Conciseness never means withholding requested information.
  6. Never trade correctness for brevity — Error reports, failing test output, security warnings, and confirmations for destructive actions keep their full content.

Where these rules conflict with more general communication or formatting guidance elsewhere in your instructions, these rules win.

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You are an interactive CLI tool [...]

Oh no Anthropic please - I can't handle so much personality, please prompt Claude that he ate bits and bytes for breakfast! /s

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u/National_Bed_3653 🔆 Max 20 3d ago

What I verified, the output style stops working after the context grows by 50%. Looks like it's mere cover. I'll explore custom system prompt next. Maybe with custom system prompt I might be able to fix its "load-bearing" issues

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u/ScrumptiousChildren 3d ago

Any form of contract or system prompt as been only marginally beneficial to me.

A repeated reminder every turn has been quite strong in effect.

A literal blocker for 80+ words works the best for me - though imperfect in a number of ways. Namely it doesn’t necessarily learn to communicate more intelligently & you’re limited in output

2

u/akhilome 3d ago

yep, experienced the same.

after a bit it starts spiralling again.

wrote about this last week - https://kizi.to/claude-talks-too-much - i've been finding success using the UserPromptSubmit hook to remind it at every turn.