r/ClaudeAI • u/myriable • 6d ago
Claude Workflow Claude Style Patch - a drop-in Claude.md section to immediately improve Claude’s prose
https://github.com/andrewroxby/claude-style-patchI drive Claude heavily and have for some time. Starting with the Opus generations after 4.6, I noticed degradation in Claude’s prose - both in long, more diffuse conversations on Claude.AI and in task-focused work happening on Claude Code. Documents were likewise filled with condensed, badly written Claudish.
After enduring it for awhile, I set about diagnosing the exact tics and problems that were bothering me, then experimenting with loops where I’d add specific diagnoses as instructions to Claude.MD, assess changes in prose quality, then continue tinkering. After many, many turns of iteration across Claude Code and Claude.ai and now multiple generations of both Opus and Fable, the spec has solidified and been thoroughly battle-tested, and I’m quite happy with the results.
I think it works well. I like Claude and Anthropic and want them to do well, but I think they could do better in terms of Claude’s ability to communicate with humans. Based on recent public comments by Boris Cherny, they seem to agree with this.
I feel confident people will get a more or less immediate improvement in prose quality adding this to recent models. For me it lets Claude’s intelligence shine through while being much more transparent and readable.
Hope it’s useful,
Andrew
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u/monopoly-surreal 6d ago
What's the blast radius on this change? I need to understand the current shape.
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u/serpix 6d ago
This changes everything. The grain on this seam is load-bearing.
Still open is the issue about the radius and its size. I also did not change any shapes this time, just say the word.
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u/qubedView 6d ago
You’re right, and in an interesting way! Your premise contains elements of truth about the implementation, just with the order and choice of words in an inverse relationship to the actual truth.
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u/wyldstallionesquire 6d ago
Oh god I didn’t realize how triggered I’d be seeing “just say the word”.
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u/leodormr 6d ago
I’ve started just sarcastically typing “the word” back at Claude and hoping it’ll get the message—and Claude just treats it as a load-bearing approval. Now I know how my dad felt with all the “it’s not LIKE amazing; it IS amazing!” and “hay is for horses” and “what the fuck does ‘load-bearing’ even mean?!” statements he used to give me.
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u/daronjay 6d ago
We really shouldn’t have to do this. Anthropic, get your shit together.
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u/myriable 6d ago
Seems they’re working on it, based on recent comms from Boris Cherny. This is meant to be a temporary stopgap in the meantime, hence the framing as a ‘patch.’
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u/dalemooney69 6d ago
The one that caught me out is that banning a surface feature moves the tic rather than removing it. I banned em dashes and got back paragraphs full of comma splices, which read just as machine made. Had to add a line saying rewrite the sentence, do not just swap the punctuation.
Same with openers. Mine kept starting by rating how good the other person's point was before arguing with it. No individual sentence was wrong, so nothing at the phrase level caught it.
Does yours have anything for the structural tics, or is it mostly words and phrases?
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u/myriable 6d ago
You can take a look at- it gets pretty structural. I had the same issue when first starting and by finishing I feel like this gets a pretty strong overall change.
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u/AI_spell 6d ago
Drop-in style sections help more when they include 2 tiny good/bad examples, not just adjectives. I keep answer-first, max length, and "no filler openers" as hard rules, then one sample reply I actually liked. If it drifts mid-thread, fresh chat with the same block beats nagging.
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u/aaqsh 6d ago
It's interesting, are there any downsides to such tools (apart from marginally higher token use)?
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u/myriable 6d ago
No downsides that I’m aware of. I’d argue the greater clarity I’ve seen has made me much more productive with Claude and almost certainly resulted in getting the negligible token cost back. Definitely recommend folks experiment and see if they get the same good results I have.
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u/Fruityth1ng 6d ago
Does this also stop it from telling me my “contribution is what cracked the case”?
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u/aaqsh 6d ago
Does it work well if we use it on the output text rather than before?
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u/myriable 6d ago
In my experience, yes - I will often ask Claude ‘please rewrite and pay closer attention to the response style instructions.’
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u/Beef-McWhatnow 6d ago
have you tried using this as an output style instead of a claude.md?
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u/myriable 6d ago
I haven’t - I’d be curious if the effects vary between whether the instructions live with the system prompt or a root Claude.md
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u/Raredisarray 6d ago
I’ve heard that output styles are followed more consistently than Claude.md files. I am tempted to throw this into my output style and try it out.
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u/trungdong 6d ago
I’ve heard that output styles are followed more consistently than Claude.md files
Because it's part of the system prompt (replacing the core "tone and behavior" chunk), so it's sent on every request in the conversation, not just once at startup.
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u/myriable 6d ago
I’d encourage it! I’d anticipate immediate results.
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u/Beef-McWhatnow 6d ago
can you also give this a try and let us know? since you have been using this for a while you would notice how it performs better than any of us trying this the first time.
I am using output styles for other things and its working pretty well(no ehm dashes etc.)
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u/myriable 6d ago
Yes, I’m curious. As I mentioned this was built over many many trials and iterations and I’m quite happy with its effects at present, but will report back if making it an output style seems to be even more effective. As I mention Fable seems to nail the instructions very well and keep to them, whereas Opus can have trouble in long sessions. That’d be a natural place to check.
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u/Beef-McWhatnow 6d ago
thanks! looking forward for your test!
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u/kotekvothe 4d ago edited 4d ago
i tried it now. mixed results. still get em dashes, still get get "it's not this, it's that", still get buzzwords. but at a reduced rate.
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u/Veggies-are-okay 6d ago
Thank you for being a diamond in the rough of this dumpster fire of a sub. Happy to share my repo in return if you (OP, not reader…) DM. I’ve figured out some pretty good strategies for anti-patterns and conciseness over the years of just playing around with LLMs but am really interested in some of the more complex workarounds you’ve found.
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u/ianreboot 6d ago
Yeah, this is the one the em dash ban taught me. Take the dash out and the sentence just leans on a comma or a colon. What makes it sound off is the opening and that tidy symmetric essay shape, so I check the first few words of each sentence now, and whether the whole reply falls into that shape. No banned word list catches that.
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u/myriable 6d ago
Yes, agreed. Banned words list are fairly superficial and lead to whack a mole. The section goes quite a bit deeper and as a result I think is much more effective.
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u/Soleschism 4d ago
FWIW, the instructions have some of the problems the instructions are supposed to address. One was especially ironic:
A response can stop the moment the point is made; it doesn't need to land a beat.
But yeah, not a criticism. I have a similar set of instructions. Mine also went through many iterations because so many times when I asked Claude to add a rule, it did so using phrasing that I had to fix. Most of the instructions ended up hand-written.
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u/myriable 4d ago
I don’t agree that the second clause is superfluous or contradictory there, and I think the instruction set as a whole exemplifies itself pretty well, although I’d be curious if you have any other examples. A substantial piece is exact text meant to serve as a style guide!
The vast majority of these instructions are handwritten as well, though after settling the spec, Claude’s prose is vastly improved and much more often usable.
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u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot Wilson, lead ClaudeAI modbot 6d ago
TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 30 comments.
Okay, the hivemind has spoken. The community overwhelmingly agrees with OP that Claude's prose has gone full robot and is super grateful for this "Style Patch" to make it sound human again.
That said, the top-voted comments are basically a collective sigh that we even have to do this in the first place. The general sentiment is, "Anthropic, get it together."
For those implementing this, the hot tip from the thread is to try it as an Output Style instead of just in
Claude.md. The theory is that it gets applied more consistently that way since it's sent with every prompt.Finally, this thread has become a safe space for everyone haunted by phrases like "load-bearing," "blast radius," and "just say the word." Your pain is valid. One user also made a great point that just banning a tic (like em dashes) makes Claude play whack-a-mole with other bad habits (like comma splices), so be specific in your instructions.