Birbla

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • this isn't just necessary, it's mandatory. that's the difference.
    by zengid
  • I use multiple AI tools simultaneously, and I feel that Claude has gradually adopted a more explanatory tone following updates around March and July. As for loss of context, it’s particularly problematic and can occur after just a few back-and-forth exchanges. The user experience changes with every update for every AI tool, so I feel there are more downsides to sticking with the same one indefinitely.
    by ErystelaThevale
  • Similar to vomit[0] and claudish-to-english[1].

    My general feeling here is that this really needs to be fixed at the model level. All other solutions are mere hacks that work for a bit but all have drawbacks. It's either adding yet more context (which has variable rates of success) or piping to a different model to translate, or using a skill, or mentioning this per each prompt, or....

    At this point I think it's in Opus's nature to talk like this, and given enough back-and-forth it will start to drift back to its classic mode, aka this incomprehensible "load-bearing seam" babble.

    [0] https://github.com/zachahn/vomit/tree/main

    [1] https://github.com/gvzdv/claudish-to-english

    by quibono
  • Everybody is complaining about this, at this point I’m sure they will deliver a tone of voice change in the 5.1 releases. Possibly with a new set of problems though, especially if this is part of an effort to obscure thinking to reduce distillation efficacy. In that case I believe Anthropic is doing damage to themselves. Caring about the quality of your product is the best strategy, the competition will come no matter what.
    by JV00
  • Related and recent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49375996

    "Vomit: Clean up Claude 5's token output with a separate LLM" (github.com/zachahn)

    285 points | 23 hours ago | 288 comments

    by WalterGR
  • It's such a sad indictment of Anthropic's product that so many people hate interacting with it. Claude is on its way to the Microsoft Teams zone of hatred.
    by walthamstow
  • Has Anthropic said anything about how or why Claude writes the way it does? So many people hate it, seems like they need to do some damage control there.

    I haven't had the same problems others have but I'm also not a heavy user of it.

    by datakan
  • I've started giving these instructions and I think I've been much more successful in generating clear output:

    Comment blocks are <= 7 words, function names <= 4 words. User-facing message strings should be <= 10 words. Use an active voice, no stage performances, and pick the most common word when choosing among alternatives.

    Limiting the number of words is the strongest factor in cleaning up the output, IMO.

    For older code I've instructed it to delete all the comments, and then I re-comment it using a new session and these guidelines, asking it to rejustify the need for every comment to itself.

    by mmastrac

Explore Birbla archives