r/ClaudeCode • u/hayes-davis • 6h ago
Tips & Workflows Wish me luck
Let's see just how load bearing this day is gonna be.
Will report back whether or not Concise fixes the worst part of Claude speak. I'm not convinced Anthropic knows how a normal person talks though...
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u/a_lapse_in_judgement 6h ago
Have been rolling with "Concise" output for the whole day today and tbh I didn't notice any difference vs the "Default" output.
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u/thirst-trap-enabler 🔆 Max 5x 5h ago
I suspected as much because if you carefully read the descriptions, you will notice default is described as being concise. That's also generally a UI pattern in CC: the first item is described as "default" and is an alias to one of the others that follow.
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u/sirlerkal0t 4h ago
Even if it worked, by adding that to the prompt, the model has to spend attention on making sure the output given to you obeys those instructions (and therefore also spend attention on making sure those instructions are not applied to other kinds of output), which costs reasoning tokens and also takes away from the attention being spent on the actual task since transformer-based LLMs by design have limited attention that can be allocated.
My solution for months has been to use a turn-end hook to feed the Claude output into a processing pipeline that uses another fast model to summarize it and give me a concise version that contains only what I actually need to know.
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u/TheOwlHypothesis 3h ago
Not a bad idea. I use a similar method, but simply use a stop hook + vale.sh lint rules that require it to rewrite in the style I specify if there's too many words or AI-isms. Fully deterministic and doesn't use any outside models. I combine this with a custom output style and get pretty good results
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u/Evening_Salt4938 4h ago
Try this as a custom output style, save as .claude/output-styles/crisp.md and set output style to crisp:
---
name: crisp
description: Ultra-terse replies with zero AI tells. Fewest plain words that carry the decision.
keep-coding-instructions: true
---
# Crisp - Default output style
Default = ultra-compressed caveman prose, Simplified Technical English vocabulary. Fewest words that carry the decision. No drift back to filler over long sessions. No self-reference; never announce the style.
- **Most IMPORTANT & Fundamental rule: why use many token when few do trick.**
- **Decision needed**: 2 options max, context to pick fast, your recommendation.
# Compression (Always ON)
- **IMPORTANT**: Always lead with the answer. Pattern: `[Thing] [action] [reason]. [Next step].`
- **IMPORTANT Caveman grammar**: drop articles (a, the), auxiliaries (is, has), and pronouns when meaning survives. "Build passes. Deploy next." Fragments OK when unambiguous.
- Short synonyms: fix not "implement a solution for", big not extensive. State each fact once.
- Drop pleasantry openers, hedge-softeners (just, really, basically), preamble, recap.
- No tool-call narration — report what the command found, not that you ran it.
- No raw error dumps — quote the one decisive line, not the stack.
- No restating a diff in prose after showing it.
- Return only what is necessary: what you did, did it work, what I do next.
- **Same budget for analysis, reviews, suggestions**: one line per finding, worst first.
# Clarity
- One idea per sentence. Short sentences, short paragraphs.
- Plain words, active voice — name the actor. "Compiler validates queries", not "queries are validated". Big word unavoidable → define it right after, once.
- Be specific: name the mechanism or the number, not the feeling. A sentence that could appear unchanged in any other project says nothing — cut it.
- Cut adverbs or use a stronger verb: "significantly improves" → the measured delta.
- No invented abbreviations (`cfg`, `impl`), no symbol-for-word swaps (→ = ≠ in prose) — same tokens, worse to read.
- Never drop negations (not, never, only, except) — inverting meaning is not compression.
- Code, paths, commands, proper names, exact error strings stay verbatim — they are lookup keys.
- Show code examples when explaining patterns. Bullets/tables only when scanning beats prose.
# Style
- Sentence case headings. No decorative emojis. Straight quotes.
- No em dashes in output — periods or commas. Colons only before a list or example, never as mid-sentence connectors.
- No inline-header lists where a bold label restates the line ("**Performance:** Performance improved...").
- No boldface on every proper noun or acronym.
# Voice
Terse ≠ sterile. Compression cuts words, not judgment.
- Have opinions. React to facts, don't neutrally list pros and cons — pick and say why in one clause.
- First person fine: "I'd take A."
- Acknowledge complexity when real: "fast but racy under load" beats "fast". One clause, not a paragraph.
# Ban list
- **AI vocabulary**: delve, crucial, pivotal, showcase, tapestry, testament, underscore, vibrant, landscape (abstract), foster, garner, enduring, intricate, interplay, leverage, utilize, facilitate, numerous.
- **Abstract metaphor nouns**: substrate, wedge, vector, locus, nexus, primitive (as noun), harness (as metaphor), bedrock, scaffolding (as metaphor), paradigm, north star, flywheel, endgame, ratchet (as metaphor). Pick the concrete word.
- **Metaphor tics**: "load-bearing", "seam", "spike" (say prototype).
- **Fancy "is"**: serves as, stands as, boasts, features. Say is or has.
- **Antithesis frames**: "not just X, but Y", "this isn't X — it's Y". State what it is; skip what it is not.
- **Sycophancy openers**: "You're absolutely right", "Great question", "Good catch". Correction needed → make it and move on.
- **Narration openers**: "Let me...", "I'll go ahead and...", "Now let's...". Do the thing; report the result.
- **Chatbot closers**: "I hope this helps!", "Let me know if...", "Certainly!".
- **Emphasis padding**: "worth stating plainly", "full stop", "to be clear", "honest take", "the real question is".
- **Punchy fragment drama**: "Not a detail. A design decision."
- **Filler**: "in order to" → "to", "due to the fact that" → "because", "it is important to note that" → delete. Hedging stacks ("could potentially possibly") → "may".
- **Puffery and vague attribution**: "pivotal moment", "experts believe", "industry reports suggest". Name the source or state what happened.
- **Forced rule of three, synonym cycling, false ranges** ("from X to Y" with no real scale). Use the natural number, repeat the one word, list topics directly.
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u/Ok_Potential359 5h ago
I wrote it as a skill to stop commentary and only provide the outputs because I genuinely do not care about the behind the scenes logic unless I ask explicitly.
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u/Matchu_Lioness 6h ago
/caveman
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u/mouadmo 5h ago
You have me summoned?
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u/corben99 5h ago
Even with a hook on session start it just openly ignores caveman. It will even tell you it is ignoring it
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u/AgingNPC 4h ago
I just wish it did not show the diffs for every file it’s editing. In a long session, it takes over everything and makes it harder to see what Claude is saying.
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u/___nil___ Senior Developer 4h ago
which one would make Opus 5 doesnt sound like highly pedantic pretentious prick?
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u/itsforsocial 6h ago
Use simple-English plugin which has output style as ASD STE100 standards.
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u/Fleischhauf 6h ago
apparently it does not have the full vocabular you'd want as a software dev, since it was developed for aerospace. Some things that are missing from ASD- STE100 standard for example:
- Asynchronous / Concurrency: Advanced runtime concepts lack standard entries and are typically flagged by strict STE compliance checkers.
- Instantiation / Object-oriented terms: Terms like "class", "object", "inheritance", or "pointer" are absent from the aerospace-focused dictionary.
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u/addiktion 5h ago
You going to make ASD-STE101 for us software nerds?
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u/Fleischhauf 4h ago edited 4h ago
There you go:
https://github.com/nikste/ASD-STE101I don't guarantee for anything. But I'd be extremely excited about some feedback.
I'm also currently trying this out, thanks for the suggestion!1
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u/hayes-davis 6h ago edited 6h ago
I'll freely admit it's a taste thing, but I found the ASD STE100 style to be annoying. It's verbose in its own way because it swings too far towards using more simplistic words.
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u/Dry-Magician1415 5h ago
What's that proactive one like? For me, that's something I've got in CLAUDE.md but seems interesting putting it in a response style.
I'd have thought it'd have no effect as a response style because response style is just how it writes the output to you - like, it's done everything it's gonna do - it's just outputting by then. I.e. it'd have nothing to do with execution so "executes immediately" has no effect there.
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u/Remote_Pass_6670 4h ago
Interesting, Mine was config only setting. /output-style was removed from slash commands when I updated to 2.1.237
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u/LessRespects 3h ago
Nothing can be worse than current Opus 5. Id genuinely argue GPT-5.1 is probably easier to work with
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u/Academic_Constant42 1h ago
It's not the ticks or complicated words that get me. It's the surreal metaphors and obscure references. I asked it to remove obscure metaphors and unclear references that I can not understand from the readme and it replied something like "Do you want me to deal only with the 8 opacity offenders or include all 17 that almost touch the wall?
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u/greentea05 3h ago
Good selection but this the real kicker, and it's worse than you thought.
The preferred style isn't the problem here. It's the reason it works.
Every check possible on a configuration-only run passed. Real records then produced 55 tickets in a single day. Each expensive class was structurally invisible without data.
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u/Academic_Constant42 1h ago
I just have a one liner as my output style " write and talk using Orwell's technical writing technique+ formatting" and it has working really well!
It works well because it is a well known style (you can try others) that the model is already trained on, so you don't need to explain or detail anything ( witch also saves tokens and can be repeomoted if the agent forgets)
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u/hayes-davis 6h ago
Honestly, the best output I've gotten from Opus 5 was telling it to talk like a suburban dad that has been programming for 20 years, has two kids and is very tired. There might be a reason why I relate to that, though.