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mywittynameyesterday at 7:44 PM2 repliesview on HN

Even when I add multiple prompts into the claude.md file not to be so sycophant sounding and just be blunt, it's responses are full of "the reason it lands...", "that's not X, it's Y" "Your understanding of X — it's better than most people's" or "you already own the right question...".

I don't like that I like it.


Replies

GrinningFoolyesterday at 9:29 PM

The most helpful instructions I've found that curb this: "Do not use superlatives. Do not use persuasive writing style."

I have other more specific ones to avoid talking about things that it's not doing, but those two sentences have covered a lot of ground for me when working w/ Opus models.

cannonpalmsyesterday at 10:02 PM

I have had success in rooting these out by using the correct linguistic terminology for each. Negative parallelisms, tricolons/polycolons, etc. I haven't come up with the proper terminology for all of them.