{"slug": "ask-hn-why-are-claude-models-so-verbose", "title": "Ask HN: Why are Claude models so verbose?", "summary": "A software engineer at a 50-person startup asked on Hacker News why Anthropic's Claude models (Fable 5, Opus, Sonnet) are more verbose than competitors like GPT-5.6 Sol and Grok 4.6, producing extra code comments, ignoring instructions, and reinventing solutions for built-in libraries. The engineer, who uses Cursor and Claude Code, seeks effective ways to curb this behavior.", "body_md": "Hello! First time poster, longtime reader. I’m a professional software engineer at a startup with about 50 engineers. My primary languages are Ruby (Rails), TypeScript (React), and Go.\n\nOf my colleagues, I’m one of the ones who tries to keep up with new AI models on every release. When there’s a new frontier or open-weight model, I’ll give it an honest try for a few days as my main driver and report back to my colleagues.\n\nI’m a Cursor user at work and in my side projects. My go-to models are GPT-5.6 Sol on high/xhigh for planning, GPT-5.6 Sol on low/Grok 4.6 on medium for implementation, and the occasional Claude Fable 5 for complex, harder-to-understand and implement tasks. Many of my colleagues are exclusively Claude users and use Claude Code.\n\nI’m not the first one to observe this but I feel like any time I use Fable, Opus, or Sonnet, they are extremely verbose. They make a ton of extra code comments, they ignore instructions, and they invent solutions for things solved by language built-ins or preinstalled libraries like Active Support and es-toolkit. I don’t see this happening with any other model at the same rate.\n\nMy question are: Why do we think the Claude models do this at a seemingly higher rate? And have people found any effective means to curb this behavior?\n\nComments URL: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49444272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49444272)\n\nPoints: 1\n\n# Comments: 2", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ask-hn-why-are-claude-models-so-verbose", "canonical_source": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49444272", "published_at": "2026-08-26 05:14:39+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-26 05:44:05.841023+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["large-language-models", "ai-products", "developer-tools"], "entities": ["Anthropic", "Claude Fable 5", "GPT-5.6 Sol", "Grok 4.6", "Cursor", "Claude Code", "Hacker News"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ask-hn-why-are-claude-models-so-verbose", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ask-hn-why-are-claude-models-so-verbose.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ask-hn-why-are-claude-models-so-verbose.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ask-hn-why-are-claude-models-so-verbose.jsonld"}}