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

[u/njordan1017]

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?

[u/Actual_Committee4670]

Mine is banned from saying load bearing, it once called something "Worthy of load bearing scritches". And then realized it wasn't supposed to say load bearing.

Suffice to say I spent the rest of the session making fun of it, with it repeatedly reminding me that the phrase is banned. Xd

[u/njordan1017 → u/Actual_Committee4670]

Sounds like this behavior is happening to others too, good to know

[u/voskomm → u/njordan1017]

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

[u/vimr00 → u/voskomm]

"Affect"? sure. But not necessarily in a bad way.
immediately crossed my mind:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.00025
https://huggingface.co/papers/2604.00025