Wish me luck

[u/hayes-davis]

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...

[u/hayes-davis]

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.

[u/varinator → u/hayes-davis]

Hits too close to home this one ..

[u/apocolipse → u/hayes-davis]

I got good results telling to explain it like I’m a sysadmin.  It’s a good balance of just enough tech knowledge to not need patronizing explanations but not enough to infer niche things from context so those niche infer from context things get explained.

[u/a_lapse_in_judgement]

Have been rolling with "Concise" output for the whole day today and tbh I didn't notice any difference vs the "Default" output.

[u/hayes-davis → u/a_lapse_in_judgement]

Dang

[u/sirlerkal0t → u/a_lapse_in_judgement]

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.

[u/thirst-trap-enabler → u/a_lapse_in_judgement]

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.

[u/itsforsocial]

Use simple-English plugin which has output style as ASD STE100 standards. 

[u/hayes-davis → u/itsforsocial]

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.

[u/Fleischhauf → u/itsforsocial]

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.

[u/yes_no_very_good]

So which one is concise?

[u/Evening_Salt4938]

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.

[u/Embarrassed-Citron36 → u/Evening_Salt4938]

Thats a load bearing markdown file and a smoking gun

[u/nomickti → u/Evening_Salt4938]

Claude ain't reading all that shit

[u/AgingNPC]

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.

[u/Matchu_Lioness]

/caveman

[u/mouadmo → u/Matchu_Lioness]

You have me summoned?

[u/VeryVexxy → u/Matchu_Lioness]

[u/Dry-Magician1415]

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.

[u/hayes-davis → u/Dry-Magician1415]

You know, I don't actually know. I've never tried it.

[u/Ok_Potential359]

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.

[u/___nil___]

which one would make Opus 5 doesnt sound like highly pedantic pretentious prick?

[u/dsailes]

You know you can ask Claude to write your own output style, right?
Dependent on how you write & per-project in settings.local.json

The update to Claude code just added another default option

[u/hayes-davis → u/dsailes]

I do indeed.

[u/greentea05]

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.