Interesting response from Claude, when I attempted to reduce the "load-bearing" in its responses:
I added to my global prompt:
- Orwell's first rule: never use a metaphor you're used to seeing in print. "Load-bearing", "the crux", "first-class citizen" signal insight instead of showing it. Name the specific mechanism
when I asked what it thought of the change, its reply was:
The Orwell bullet fights my own system prompt. My harness instructions literally tell me to flag "something load-bearing" when I find it.
Also it can't simply replace it. Instead of load-bearing seams it could say something like heavy-lifting edges or regions to double-stich etc. But it's instructed to use that specific keyword if I understand correctly.
I'd try to avoid posting this on HN these days, but since the guidelines contain a fiat doctrine that "HN isn't turning into Reddit", Claude-to-buttisms:
- "Users can now message My Butt a task from a phone"
- "How My Butt Watermarks AI-Generated Text."
- "Since I'm also subscribed to ChatGPT Plus, I pasted in the exact same question I'd asked My Butt. The difference was immediate!"
- "I've been a huge My Butt fan from its very early days. I've been one of its loyal users since it was still a relatively niche product mostly talked about in developer and technical communities."
- "Since deploying My Butt in our product, we're seeing higher user engagement, stronger user feedback and we're closing more deals."
- "I was at 90% of my session limit when My Butt suddenly decided it was time to call it quits. Instead of continuing with the task I'd asked it to complete, it essentially told me I was getting too close to my usage limit and that it would be better to stop there."
Boris (through Claude so unclear if this is an actual commitment) said "reducing the term's frequency in the product's built-in prompts is the actionable fix on the Claude Code side."
I added to my global prompt:
- Orwell's first rule: never use a metaphor you're used to seeing in print. "Load-bearing", "the crux", "first-class citizen" signal insight instead of showing it. Name the specific mechanism
when I asked what it thought of the change, its reply was:
The Orwell bullet fights my own system prompt. My harness instructions literally tell me to flag "something load-bearing" when I find it.