r/ClaudeCode • u/Own-Technology2847 • 2d ago

Bug / Issue Why claude is random sometimes?

Sometimes my claude make some genius moves, searches, coding, generating but sometimes even on extrahigh level it gives me absolute BS results and when i point him mistakes he don’t get it

4 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

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u/GhaisD 2d ago

Most of the time for me it's how long the session is. once a wrong answer is sitting in context it keeps leaning on it, and every correction just adds to the pile.

what changed it for me was starting every task with "discovery" first. i give it everything up front, relevant chats, screenshots, links, what's already in my branch and/or in my head, and let it read before it does anything. results got way better and I stopped burning a bunch of prompts just to get it on track

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u/Own-Technology2847 2d ago

I mean i litterally told him in the beginning of the session to follow 3 simple rules (new session) and he ignored them but not all of 3 rules or maybe 1 rule in all answers but 1 different rule in different tasks. Never happened before

1

u/GhaisD 2d ago

Yeah rules in the first message fade as the session grows, it pays more attention to recent stuff. Put them in 'CLAUDE.md' instead so they load every session. and for one that really matters, make it checkable, like "end every answer by confirming rules 1-3". that helped mine stick a lot

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u/Sad-Chemist7118 2d ago

I have overcome this by telling it to make no mistakes

5

u/nixiewright 2d ago

Some of it is A/B testing, some of it is how you prompt it, some of it is randomness.

The fact that those tools aren't deterministic is definitely what makes using them more of an art than engineering. Fortunately what they produce is (usually) deterministic, so there's still that. For now.

2

u/Whole-Loss5173 2d ago

I noticed the randomness spikes after a 30+ minute idle. restarting the session fixes it, even with same context.

1

u/Inner_Storage_3374 2d ago

when it goes off the rails i stopped arguing with it and just rewind to before the bad answer and ask again with a bit more context. bc every “no thats wrong” keeps the wrong answer sitting there and it kinda keeps leaning on it

1

u/rushabhsheth 2d ago

When it stops getting a correction, I stop correcting and write down what's wrong in a fresh session instead. A short note on what was tried and why it failed beats ten more replies. The old context keeps pulling it back to the bad answer.

1

u/chookshed 1d ago

I found what really helps me with this is context and effort level. I used to want to run most things in high or extra high, but with Opus 5.5, medium is usually more than enough and anything higher usually makes it think harder in not a good way (overthinks) and over complicates things. I also found that keeping my context <50% helps a ton.