How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing

Developer Johanna Larsson published a guide showing how to use Anthropic's Claude Code hook system to replace overused phrases like "load-bearing" and "honest take" with custom text, addressing a common user complaint about the AI assistant's repetitive vocabulary.

How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing Absolutely ripping your hair out reading Claude referring to everything as “honest takes” and "load-bearing seams"? You’re not the only one https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/53454 . But what if I tell you there’s a way to take this massive source of frustration and make it so ridiculous you can't but laugh at it? Or just simply fix Claude's vocabulary. I present to you, the MessageDisplay hook. First you need a little script with some replacements set up: python /usr/bin/env python3 import json, re, sys replacements = { "seam": "whatchamacallit", "you're absolutely right": "I'm a complete clown", "honest take": "spicy doodad", "load-bearing": "cooked" } data = json.load sys.stdin text = data.get "delta" or "" for phrase, replacement in replacements.items : pattern = r"\b" + re.escape phrase + r"\b" text = re.sub pattern, replacement, text, flags=re.IGNORECASE print json.dumps { "hookSpecificOutput": { "hookEventName": "MessageDisplay", "displayContent": text, } } put that in ~/.claude/hooks/wordswap.sh and make it executable with chmod +x ~/.claude/hooks/wordswap.sh . Then to hook it up, add it to your ~/.claude/settings.json in the hooks block like: { "hooks": { "MessageDisplay": { "hooks": { "type": "command", "command": "$HOME/.claude/hooks/wordswap.sh" } } } } Hooks load at startup, so you just need to start a new session to start your new life. I'm sure you can come up with much better and more productive replacements than me. Have fun Written by Johanna Larsson /about . Thoughts on this post? Find me on Bluesky at @jola.dev https://bsky.app/profile/jola.dev . Related posts elixir oss /posts/let-libraries-be-libraries Let libraries be libraries A gentle rant on the topic of libraries that run as Elixir applications and why that's an anti-pattern for library design. atproto tangled /posts/ci-workflows-on-tangled CI workflows on Tangled for Elixir How to set up CI workflows on Tangled for Elixir, with specific Elixir and Erlang versions, and a PostgreSQL service. blog atproto /posts/automatically-syncing-your-blog-atproto-standard-site Automatically syncing your blog to atproto and standard.site Kicking off a little side project for automatically discovering content through blog post feeds and syncing to atproto and standard.site.