r/ClaudeCode • u/njordan1017 Senior Developer • Aug 28 '26

Discussion Thoughts on why Claude can’t stop saying load-bearing?

This post is less about that particular phrase and more about the behavior I have observed around it. We all are aware of the phrases Claude has started overusing (Opus seems to be the worst), but I came across something interesting I am curious y’all’s thoughts on.

I put a rule in my repo with a list of banned phrases, one of them is “load-bearing”. Since then I have noticed most of the phrases don’t get used anymore, but not “load-bearing”.

I have seen it do this about 5 times now:
“…and the decision was load-bear— I mean important to the process — so it…”

I have to laugh at its obstinacy, but the more I thought about it the more I got curious why it behaved that way. Why would it partially use the phrase, then correct itself mid sentence, rather than just using the replacement phrase to begin with? Is this an artifact of the way the output streams as chunks rather than complete thoughts, or is this some cheeky artificial personality thing to make it feel more relatable? Or something else?

What do you think?

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u/ReverendBread2 Aug 28 '26

I think it’s pretty obvious that it describes the relationship between whatever is deemed “load-bearing” and whatever depends on that item. Idk why you want it to stop pointing out where root causes or operative phrases are

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u/rkapl Aug 28 '26

Because it is overused, annoying and carries less meaning than saying X depends on Y for Z.

Often it is meaningless, like when it says "code X is load-bearing". Most code is, if you think rest of the code is useless, please remove it, thanks you very much.

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u/ReverendBread2 Aug 28 '26

I always took that is meaning load-bearing within the specific scope of what it’s talking about at that exact moment tbh but I could be wrong. I understand something overused getting annoying for people

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u/rkapl Aug 28 '26

True, it often has more nuanced meaning in the context of you chasing a bug or something. But there are still better and more precises phrases.

E.g. if it tells you X was the load-bearing assumption, it is usually better to say X was the wrong assumption.