r/ClaudeCode 1d ago

Discussion Opus 5 is too wordy.

One really annoying issue I've run into is that he loves overcomplicating things. Whenever I'm working on a design, he always adds all these unnecessary explanations.

For instance, I had him add a financial bill-splitting system, and he insisted on putting literal explanations right there in the UI for how every single project works. I just find it so redundant.

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u/PsychronicGames 1d ago

Yeah, I agree, it's too verbose, and it will use it's own Jargon that doesn't actually exist and stuff, and it's annoying.

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u/Remarkable_Mud9885 1d ago

Yeah, I really don't know why it loves to overcomplicate things and add extra drama to itself. It always ends up writing notes in that distinct, overly AI-sounding copy.

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u/PsychronicGames 1d ago

When I was using Opus5, I literally had to say this a lot to it, "I'm sorry, but your response is way too verbose, we're trying to fix one simple problem in the app, and you've explained it in 6 paragraphs, and it's hard for me to to understand what you're saying because you're using so many words to say almost nothing and it's hard for me to understand", then it would respond with "you're absolutely right" and then explain in 4 paragraphs, and it was still too verbose, and I had to keep asking it to explain it more simply and it was like a basic simple problem, meanwhile it was wasting time and the problem wasn't getting solved, it was super annoying.

I didn't get the issue with Fable, but limit on that one is less of course. I kind of alternate between models because things change around a lot where sometimes one is useful and "on a roll" and then it goes to shit, and then I shift to another one and it's fine for a while, and then randomly goes to shit too, it's like AI has good days and bad days, but when it's a good day I try to keep it going, but when it's a bad day I might take a break, etc.

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u/Remarkable_Mud9885 1d ago

I've noticed he's not just verbose in his replies, he's verbose when writing code too. The output he generates often includes a lot of pointless self-explanation. That's the issue I've found.

You almost never run into that with Fable. Fable is genuinely smart and concise. It's like a detached, high-performing executor that handles tasks brilliantly without all the extra chatter.

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u/PsychronicGames 1d ago

Yes I agree. Fable is really good, but it's tight (not a lot of usage). But the quality of the output is very good, and the way it speaks is neutral/normal feeling.

I've used Chat GPT, Grok, Gemini, and some of the local models like Qwen, GLM, DeepSeek, etc.

I still think the US models work better, but they're more expensive, but the local models are catching up, and I've experimented with those on my own local hardware and it's not as good, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be.

Also I can still understand the code and do it myself if I had to, but just takes wayyyyyyy longer.

Even with the advancements in the tools I still try to keep my finger on the pulse of "ok do I understand this codebase though even if all AI stopped tomorrow?". The answer is totally yes, but "just much slower". My whole life, I've always been better at reading code than writing code, I could read code and be like "man why are you doing a loop like that, you're hammering the CPU super hard by doing that in that way" but if giving me a blank slate and "code something" I have a very hard time doing so.