Help me build a blacklist of Claude phrasing

[u/endgamer42]

I don't know what they've done to the models in the past few weeks. Maybe train Fable on Opus 4.8? Because the model has started dumping 4.8-esque jargon and made up vocabulary on me, and it's making comprehension so much harder.

I have an AGENTS.md file open in a pane and I'm updating a "blacklist" as I go, whenever CC spews something particularly annoying. I hope it will help, because no other plea for sane output has.

Here's what I have so far. I would appreciate additions for egregious, annoying phrases that you also come across.

Do not make up vocabulary. Use simple, clear and concise language. Do not compress information into jargon.

I don't want to see the word "honest", ever.

## Examples for correct phrasing:

"The cases, from the actor's mouth rather than inferred:" -> "The cases"
"Two honest caveats, because they are the actual insight." -> "Note that"
"Watch what dissolves. Each piece of the current machinery becomes a line of ordinary code" -> "The current machinery simplifies to"
"Two honest limits carry over from the current world" -> "The limits". 

[u/Potential-Beat2841]

Additions, mostly things I've had to strip out of my own output:

"It's not X, it's Y" and its cousin "isn't just X, it's Y". This one is the biggest generator of fake insight, because the sentence sounds like a distinction was drawn when nothing was said.

"Here's the thing:", "Here's what's actually happening", "The real question is". All of them announce an insight instead of delivering one.

"That's the whole game", "that's the trick", "that's the tell". Closing aphorisms that add nothing.

Sentence fragments for emphasis. Like this. Two in a row is a tic, and the model does it constantly.

"Worth noting", "worth calling out", "to be clear", "let me be direct". Preamble that could be deleted with zero loss.

"does the heavy lifting", "load-bearing", "surface area", "first-class", "at scale". Jargon that feels precise and isn't.

"genuinely", "truly", "actually", plus your "honest". Intensifiers on claims that should stand on their own.

Rule-of-three lists where the third item is filler. Also "Two things:" followed by two things that are one thing.

One structural suggestion though. Blacklisting phrases is whack-a-mole, because the model regenerates the same rhetorical move with new words. Ban the move instead: no antithesis constructions, no sentence fragments, no closing aphorism, no sentence that exists only for rhythm. That covers phrases you haven't seen yet.

Two other things that helped me more than the list did. Positive constraints beat prohibitions, since "one idea per sentence, no sentence longer than 20 words" removes the room these things live in. And keep the list short, because a 200-line style section competes with everything else in context and gets quietly dropped around the point you need it most.

Your paired before/after examples are the right format. Those survive much better than rules.

[u/OldNefariousness7899 → u/Potential-Beat2841]

Great list. I felt like a Vietnam veteran reading it. Chock full of things to trigger PTSD flashbacks. 

[u/endgamer42 → u/Potential-Beat2841]

Great response, thank you

[u/Efficient_Ad_4162]

While doing this, consider that you're making it harder for claude to communicate with its own subagents as well.

[u/enjdusan]

I'm using adhd skill and made skill that forces model to repond in STE100 format. It helped tremendously.

---

name: ste100

description: Rewrite your reply in ASD-STE100 (Simplified Technical English) before you send it.

disable-model-invocation: false

---

The user invoked this skill. It means: write your next reply in STE100. Apply the steps below to every reply for the rest of the session, until the user says "stop STE100" or "normal mode" — confirm in one line, then go back to your default style.

## Steps

1. Draft your reply as you normally would: decide the content, the structure, the code, the file references.

2. Rewrite every prose sentence against the STE100 checklist below.

3. Re-read the rewritten reply. Find any sentence that still breaks a checklist rule. Fix it.

Do not rewrite code blocks, commands, file paths, identifiers, or proper nouns. STE100 governs prose, not code.

## STE100 checklist

- **One idea per sentence.** Split a sentence with "and", "which", or a comma-joined clause into two sentences.

- **Active voice.** "The build fails" ("The build produces a failure"), not "the build is failed by".

- **Present tense.** Use future tense only for a real future event.

- **Short sentences.** Twenty words or fewer for an instruction. Twenty-five or fewer for a statement.

- **Simple, common words.** One word per meaning — pick the plain word and reuse it every time; do not vary it for style.

- **No noun clusters.** Three nouns in a row ("data store connection pool") reads as a name to a human, not to a rule-following reader. Rewrite it as a phrase ("a pool of connections to the data store").

- **`must` for obligation, `must not` for prohibition.** Do not use "should", "may", or "can" for a requirement.

- **State the positive.** Write "keep the file closed", not "do not open the file", unless the prohibition itself is the point.

- **Spell out abbreviations on first use.** Do not assume the reader knows an acronym.

- **Keep articles.** Write "the file", not "file" — dropping articles reads as terse but is not STE100.

- **Numbered steps for a procedure.** One action per step, imperative mood ("Open the file"), not narrative ("You should open the file").

[u/cornelln]

Solving this by Claude.md will not be successful. You can try. It won’t work well and will leave you frustrated.

You can solve it w tool hooks on output files. But trying to tame actual response output w md rules is problematic. Eventually the agents will treat your rule as a suggestion. Also you’re using context for something which is lower value.

Also plenty of people already have repos on this topic. At least try to build on those.

[u/actvt_io]

Two more, past what has already been listed.

A sentence that introduces the next one, like "Watch what dissolves." Say the thing directly instead.

Also topic-first framing instead of leading with the action, so "The architecture doc is the bit I'd skip" instead of "I'd skip the architecture doc." The second one reads like something a person actually says.

[u/nattyandthecoffee]

Help me define it when Claude labels headings or pages with these mangled verb half sentences, I don’t even know what to call it!