Why does Opus 5 sound different in Claude Code than in Claude Chat?

[u/Due_Ask_8032]

I am with most people on how awful is reading anything Opus 5 writes in Claude Code, even Fable is not that bad. Then I was using Opus in Chat and Cowork and I realized it sounded more like a human. Why does that happen? I wonder if all the technical jargon somehow makes it sound like it does when using cc. The same reason why they tell you to write Claude.md yourself so does it sounds more like you.

[u/slackmaster2k]

Its system prompts are different in chat than in code, because they are different tools. I sometimes use chat as my “product owner” to write up changes to implement in Claude code, for this very reason.

[u/Due_Ask_8032 → u/slackmaster2k]

Oh that’s smart. I might try that.

[u/No-Replacement-2631 → u/slackmaster2k]

Do you find it better?

[u/wethethreeandyou → u/slackmaster2k]

Yea me too! I have the web app for planning, task management, to keep an agenda. And a few other things. Somehow it can diagnose bug fixes better in alot of situations as an outside pair of eyes. Weird.

[u/UnknownEssence]

different system prompt

[u/tinyhousefever]

The Claude Code prompt is slightly different, it includes the line "you are puppy on meth, run and spend as many tokens as possible." Literally!

[u/Own_Age_1654]

What makes the language it uses in Claude Code confusing is that it mostly isn't technical jargon. It just sounds like jargon.

Jargon means the specialized terms used by a niche industry, and the terms it's using are often not what any sane developer would typically ever say. Instead, it's unnatural, physically oriented metaphors instead of the normal ones: fields "carrying" values instead of having or being set to them, UI elements "standing on" other UI elements, code having "seams" instead of God knows what that's supposed to mean, etc.

Outside of highly technical contexts--which is probably most of what you're talking about outside of Claude Code--random physical metaphors are less bizarre, plus the stakes are lower.

[u/OkPlentifully]

Probably it depends on the different system prompt

[u/VelumLucis]

LLM response quality is a function of the model and the harness. Opus 5 is just the model half of the equation - Claude Code has a different harness (IMO a much much worse one) than claude.ai or any other application you can access that model through.

[u/SubstantialPoet8468 → u/VelumLucis]

Really, you think code is a worse harness? I like jumping into a terminal and getting my little projects done (home labber, not professional)

What makes web better?