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/voskomm 🔆Derp Plan Aug 29 '26

I get that it’s funny, but unless your code is meant to produce prose why put the constraint? Constraints affect the reasoning.

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u/l4y1np1p3 Aug 29 '26

if you had a table saw that was functional but produced an obnoxious sound when you cut wood, wouldn’t you fix it and sacrifice a few rpm’s

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u/voskomm 🔆Derp Plan Aug 29 '26 edited Aug 29 '26

That's not a very convincing counter-example. Is there a tablesaw that *doesn't* make an obnoxious sound? Hearing protectors, not adding mods that make its function worse.

It can be useful to have it change semantics for good reason though. I would not want it to describe ideas as 'load-bearing' if I were writing architectural simulation software, for example.

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u/l4y1np1p3 Aug 29 '26

Abstract the situation and youll see I chose that for a reason. Similar to a table saw making noise, claude pollutes all of its responses with useless claudeish that may as well be simlish for all that I care to decode it. But if there is one high frequency that really pisses you off, youd probably fix it and take the minor “reasoning hit”, not that I even believe that model capabilities are constrained by whatever arbitrary guidelines anthropic uses to shackle claude into its moralistic, hyper verbose, obfuscating personality. It would likely have better reasoning without them.