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Comment by gb2d_hn | Hacker News Reader

I switched as I felt Codex was on a par with Opus, but the chat responses from Sol are just more intelligible than the word soup I've been getting from Opus. I wonder if Opus could be prompted to respond in simpler prose via agents.md

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I have also noticed that I am increasingly struggling to read what LLMs are writing, finding it incomprehensible half the time. I stole Matt Pocock's line of "When reporting information to me, be extremely concise and sacrifice grammar for the sake of concision." for the agents.md It makes it a little better. I also specify to use https://github.com/AminBlg/SimpleEnglish/ for all writing it does including code comments. It all feels like a bandaids but that seems to be the best we can do right now.

Ah, so I am not the only one struggling with deciphering Opus writing style. At times I feel dumb as a rock because I read the same passage like 5 times and I still don't get it.

Yes it can, it's called "output style" under `/config`:

```

This changes how Claude Code communicates with you

  1. Default     Claude completes coding tasks efficiently and provides concise responses

  2. Proactive    Claude executes immediately, minimizes interruptions, and prefers action over planning

  3. Explanatory  Claude explains its implementation choices and codebase patterns

  4. Learning     Claude pauses and asks you to write small pieces of code for hands-on practice

```

You can set up a custom one under `vi ~/.claude/output-styles/eli5.md` and `eli5` would show up in the list above:

```

---

name: ELI5

description: keep it simple please

keep-coding-instructions: true

---

I can't process lengthy text, talk to me like I'm 5.

Small words, short sentences, short paragraphs. If you have to use a big word, explain it right after. Only return what's actually necessary. Just tell me what you did, did it work, what do I do now.

If I have to decide something: show 3 options max, the context I need to pick fast, and which one you'd go with.

Keep paths and commands exact. I have no brain cells left for the rest.

```

I'm not sure if it's a good thing that there's a config option for this, it kinda means they know there's issues with verbosity.

> I wonder if Opus could be prompted to respond in simpler prose via agents.md

God knows I've tried. I've got a variant of the ASD-STE100 trick which does the job, mostly, at the start … but get to about 100k of context and it goes out the window.

The model's personality is too strong for simple suggestion, alas.

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