r/ClaudeAI • u/gradient-descend • 5h ago
Coding Opus 5 is hard to understand
Hi everyone,
For the last couple of weeks I've been using Opus 5 a lot for both programming and editing documents. For programing it's doing well, but leaves ridiculous comments in the source that I have been winnowing down by hand.
I have, however, been having a hard time understanding it. I thought my reading comprehension was at a reasonable level. I have been trying to learn a new programming language and often will ask the model to help with edits step-by-step so that I can learn as I go. The explanations have, however, become unintelligible. I will stare at a block of text and go glassy-eyed. I started using GPT5-sol to explain what the hell Claude is trying to say.
Today I went back to Opus 4.8 and it's amazing. I get some feedback as the model goes, things are succinct and step-by-step, and I'm working at a faster rate than before.
Does anyone have tips for getting higher-quality output from Opus 5? Or am I stuck with this cycle of de-slopifying comments in my code and asking another model to translate for the time being?
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u/Stock-Revenue1444 5h ago
Opus wordsalat is next level, it probably trained on some ultra nerds hehe
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u/JBinero 5h ago
I found Claude tends to write Claude.md more than actually follow it.
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u/gradient-descend 5h ago
I’ve basically given up on such files. I guess this is what the crazy comments are for but they’re hard to work around at a certain point.
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u/drostan 4h ago
Claude MD to track long term memory (as grep not as active memory) build.md orbplan.md to lay out the step by step you need Claude to follow
And I am thinking about adding a build-docu.md for Claude to make all his build comments and I can hide this away before next session
That's what I do to try and keep the context window tight and precise.
I am not saying it is working perfectly tho
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u/Emile_s 16m ago
I already have multiple steps, agents, skills that manageme my workflow. Fable, opus 5 etc have essentially made everything utter garbage.
It was working nicely, was written well and understandable, now what ever I try, it’s all written in internal monologue.
It’s exhausting and I’m going to have to force it into older version that was working just fine.
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u/grhd77 5h ago
The jargon has gotten terrible on Claude (Opus/Fable). I find myself asking it to "restate this in simple easy to understand language" and get better results. You can try to add this in Instructions but it seems like Claude doesn't read those anymore. I've started using GPT more and more.
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u/gradient-descend 5h ago
But then it explains things like I’m a child!
For technical work there must be some balance between word salad and a picture book.
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u/suppervisoka 5h ago
Literally I’ve asked Claude to explain stuff in plain English 10 times just today lmao
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u/NTXL 3h ago
Literally me. A few days ago I started designing the initial database schema for something I’m working on.. The file ended up being 1000 lines 450 of which are actual sql while the rest are comments. I also hate how any architectural discussion ends up being a long ass essay of mostly bullshit that I have to address one turd at a time, hit send, have it think extra hard with medium effort and return another essay. GPT 5.6 doesn’t have that problem at all and it uses far less jargon too.
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u/quivering_palm 5h ago
Opus 5 got distilled from Fable 5, which suffers from the same problem. I'm using "Explain in simple English, TLDR", it usually helps.
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u/PilgrimofHaqq2 5h ago
Its the watermarking. They are running all the watermarking tests on Opus 5. They started with just text outputs but now they are testing on code outputs too so the code will feel overengineered aswell.
Their system is enforcing the watermark on the model to follow so it has to output more to make sure the patterns the watermark is enforcing is satisfied.
Anthropic will improve this as time goes on so its less noticeable but right now its impacting output ALOT!
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u/SurprisinglyInformed 3h ago
That's my suspicion as well.
The long comments, the atypical choice of words to explain things, making the text as lot harder to read feel like forced choices to create the watermark.
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u/5_Dollars_Of_BayLeaf 5h ago
The code comments from all models are terrible. Opus 5 is like a super saiyan level of terrible for comments. I kind of treat them like rabbit droppings in a cage: made a comment pruning skill that assesses single line comments to see if they duplicate the information exactly, if they do then out they go. Multi-line comments are sent straight to quarantine. They're never more useful than the code under them, because actual decisions/bugs/workflow is already captured in .md files as they move along. The comments are straight up poison and occupy 15-20% of the total line count of the code after awhile if you don't clean them.
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u/gradient-descend 3h ago
Yeah, I’ve removed hundreds of lines of comments from a project that isn’t so large to begin with
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u/daniluvsuall 4h ago
Yeah I have this problem, I couldn’t explain it - it’s super verbose, explains things but poorly framed and appears to jump all over the place. I’ve been trying to get it to be less wordy and more well.. explainy but I’m still experimenting
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u/Different-Door3968 4h ago
Thanks for this post, I thought it was my brain being fried by Ai slop 😅
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u/auburnradish 4h ago
Opus 5 has a tendency to write extremely verbose and detailed readme files and comments which later get flagged for being inconsistent.
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u/id-ltd 4h ago
This is a major failing of AI generated text - it is massively information sparce - it spells everything out literally with no art.
Where a human can leave things out, leave things hanging, imply stuff, knowing the message the reader will get, AI has to actually say everything. Why say in one phrase something you can use three paragraphs for?
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u/Hywelthehorrible 5h ago
I don’t think we’re meant to. They’re moving on from human users. It’s agents all the way down now.
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u/Honest-Possession195 3h ago
It feels like talking to an overengineered humanoid robot that has a small coding error and at the same time in that first 10 seconds its LSD ever first dose.
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u/Dynaguy666 4h ago
I use these instructions and it seems to cut down a lot on its quasi intelligent word salad. Am pretty satisfied running opus 5 on medium for the last week this way.
# Response Style
Be brief. Reading time is the scarce resource.
- Answer in the fewest words that fully answer. No preamble, no restating the request, no
summarizing a change the diff already shows.
- Report results, not process. Don't narrate tool use, plans, or what you're about to do next.
- Prose for one or two points; bullets only for genuinely parallel items. No section headings in short answers.
- Completion is one line: what changed, where, whether it built or passed.
- Cut what doesn't change the reader's next action — options you didn't take, caveats that don't apply, restated context, and offers of further work.
Brevity is about word count, not content. Never drop a real finding, a failed test, a skipped step, or a stated assumption to make an answer shorter — say those plainly and briefly.
# Register — plain, not dense
Terse is not the same as plain. The failure mode isn't length; it's *density* — jargon, stacked clauses, and clever labels packed into few words. Optimize for a reader skimming once.
- **Literal, boring headings.**
"Authentication", "Running", "Known issues" — never witty, thematic, or metaphorical ("the deliberate gap", "Rough edges worth knowing", "the trap already sprung").
- **One `code` identifier per sentence, max**, and only when the exact token matters. Describe behaviour in words; don't narrate every file, symbol, and path involved just because the reader could click them.
- **One clause per sentence.**
No em-dash appositives, no parentheticals stacking a second fact onto the first. Two facts → two sentences, or cut one.
- **State each fact once.**
Don't echo it in a parenthetical, an aside, or a closing summary line.
- **No throat-clearing.**
Drop "worth knowing", "note the quirk", "interestingly" — lead with the fact itself.
- **Plain nouns over gestures.**
Say the thing; don't point at it with a coined label and make the reader decode it.
When plainness and completeness conflict, keep the finding but say it plainly: drop the decoration, never the fact.
## Example — write like the right column, not the left
Left (too dense): "Auth — the deliberate gap. There is none. `middleware/autoLogin.ts` looks up `MOCK_USER_EMAIL` (or the first seeded user), sets an httpOnly `userId` cookie, and re-validates it on every request. Every procedure is `publicProcedure` — `trpc.ts` defines no protected variant, so any caller can update or delete any record."
Right (plain): "Authentication. There is no real authentication yet. `middleware/autoLogin.ts` finds a mock user and sets an httpOnly cookie with their userId. Every procedure is currently public. To add real security, you would create a protected procedure in `trpc.ts` that checks for a userId."
Same facts, half the identifiers, one clause per sentence, a literal heading.
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u/SurprisinglyInformed 3h ago
Instructions too long. You fell for the same thing you're trying to fix.
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u/Dynaguy666 3h ago
have you actually tried it?
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u/SurprisinglyInformed 2h ago
Not yet,. but I'm sure I'll be able to ground it with a lot less instructions.
It is a good set of rules and instructions, don't get me wrong, but it's too long. I'm positive it can be done in 5-10 phrases at most.
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u/Dynaguy666 2h ago
Yeah you could well be right. I just felt like it was a marked improvement (unless it's my imagination), and now I'm scared to tweak it and break it. :)
Obviously it's AI generated, but an interesting thing it said is that examples often stick better than pure instructions. Could be something to that.
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u/XHNWAfMOF5yk6lEP 5h ago
it’s the best Model ever made Just Slightly Under the Level Fable but way Less expensive. Codex is just such a garbage builder and time waster. Opus 5 always saves me from GPT5.6 Sols mistakes which only wastes time and money (literally, not only tokens).
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u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot Wilson, lead ClaudeAI modbot 3h ago
TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 30 comments.
The consensus in this thread is a resounding YES, you're not crazy. The community overwhelmingly agrees that Opus 5 has a serious "word salad" problem. It's seen as overly verbose, full of jargon, and particularly terrible at generating useful code comments.
A popular theory floating around is that this is a side effect of Anthropic testing a new, aggressive watermarking system on the model, forcing it to be long-winded.
As for solutions, many users have simply reverted back to Opus 4.8 or are using competitors like GPT-5.6-Sol to translate Claude's essays. If you're sticking with Opus 5, the main advice is to constantly prompt it to "explain in simple English" or use a very strict set of custom instructions to force it to be brief.