Claude not only writes verbose comments, it also writes comments about how things used to work when refactoring. That might have a place in version control comments, but not in the code.
I see this in docs a lot. I've been reading a lot of docs these days where it feels like the LLM is trying to hype up the person writing the docs. It's like it has no conception that the writing is meant for a 3rd party audience.
I see the full multi-paragraph comments in my codebases and get annoyed but also feel like the additional context helps improve the llm results over time because that history helps it know what's been tried and removed in the past. It's additional context for the system that improves with context.
The feature I want in the code tool itself (for me) is to adjust how verbose the comments are so I can read "just code", then "terse comments" then "full comments" then "full comments with historical context" (including fit commits and ticket references) and finally, full-on literate programming. And I'd like to switch between on the fly as I read through the code.
I think this is something we could actually produce with llms, and I feel the ability to switch between these modes would help the llm as well.
Sometimes I just need to see what's being done. Sometimes I need to know why. Sometimes I need to know what's been tried. Never always all of these things. And expecting to find this context in git comments doesn't feel right either.
I suggest the real problem comes down to training and probably training data; from the LLM's PoV, it is writing code inline with the conversation, so care has to be taken to make sure the model doesn't treat the code it outputs like it is a part of the conversation it is having.
This is the point.
But, is it true?
>It means nothing...shallow...
Ironically, the entirety of your comment just repeats that the GP comment means nothing. There is no further explanation or "depth".
// No retry was added here per AC 37b in FEATURE.MD.
// Judged on merit from computed properties during the cursor saga
// Chop 6ms due to lenience and lax-constraints vs 18ms baseline April perf measurements
The only thing you're missing is the "open question" that was stuck in page 14 of a 17 page report, which since it went unanswered, caused claude to make up an answer and go full steam ahead, ignoring fundamental properties of the entire system.
You're right, I'm sorry. You've repeatedly told me to run questions by you and I just fabricated an answer and ran with it — which is exactly the kind of dangerous time-waste we created the memory for. I'll revert it and pull up the real question so you can answer it — no wasteful assumptions this time.
(Deleted 387 lines)
Shall I engage the tachyon beams, sir?
On a more serious note, could all that chapter naming be some visible outcropping of context compaction strategies? "Condense the conversation history into a summary". Not really surprising that it comes up with these "cute" headlines. Would appearances be better if they were somehow prevented from leaking to the user? Sure. Would results be better? I don't think so, might even make a meaningful difference if the user actively embraced the terminology the machine came up with. Ouch.
// let's track age!!
// this is harder than you'd think as I with totally impressive
// foresight didn't add age to the raw data.
//
// More honestly, I didn't want to add age to the astro data as that's
// a calculation that can change depending on how you slice it.
//
// Hence we need to figure out their age first.
Edit: For API comments it's "what" of course, detailing the workings and contracts of the exported method, function or type, so one doesn't have to read the code to figure out how to use it.
This would be better IMO :)
Most of the context belongs in a ticket. And the difficulty is subjective!
That said, I think the place for "ticket-1234" is the git commit/pull request.
Very few comments are genuinely necessary now that identifiers in code can be as long as you want, it is relatively to pick names that are explanatory enough to render most comments superfluous. 1% exceptions for unusual algorithms. (You're using named consts/enums rather than magic numbers, yes?)
Also, it reads like ass.
Claude writes comments about how things used to work, which can be useful sometimes, especially if it's a big change that requires one to genuinely consider legacy behavior, but most of the time it shouldn't be there.
Two other somewhat related things it does:
- It writes as if someone reading the code and comments is aware of everything it is aware of (the current conversation, the code it has just looked at). It's really hard to make it understand that things need to stand on their own. A trick is to get a subagent to look at it with a fresh context, but it doesn't tremendously help
- It does all of this with user-facing strings too. Claude loves to write up tooltips and other labels that leak everything to the end user. Every single concern we have, every edge case we've meticulously made our code handle, it passes on to the user, so they don't "need to worry". But no sane user would think of these things. For them, a feature is a feature. The "dynamic scheduling" button should state what dynamic scheduling does plainly, and every edge case is handled by us. The "add" button does not need a label letting the user know that they will later be able to click the "delete" button, because the user will just realize it due to our adherence to proper design. Claude fails to understand good UX for the user cannot be replaced with endless labels and explanations.
It's an uphill battle and all attempts at solving this (or the brain-dead way new Anthropic models write) usually fail to work with me.
I've also written my own package for deterministically formatting comments: https://www.npmjs.com/package/comment-fmt
Both with a formatter and a linter that I run in CI for all my personal projects. Just one less thing for me to try and coerce the agent into doing correctly, so that cycles I spend reviewing agent code can be focused on actual behavior.
The CC-5 rule specifically seems to be (just from reading through, nothing repeatable-eval based) the part that actually catches and prevents me from having to clean it up afterwards.
```
### Code comments
The failure this prevents: writing a comment that narrates the change I am making right now. That context is real, but it expires the instant the change merges — the defect it describes no longer exists, so the comment becomes a story about a problem no future reader can observe. It is a changelog entry in the wrong file, and a third copy of text already required in the commit body (3.b) and the PR description.
- *CC-1 (MUST NOT)* Write a comment describing a change, a fix, a defect, its cause, or what the code used to do. No "was/now/previously/instead of", no "this fixes", no "needed because otherwise", no "note that we no longer".
- *CC-2 (MUST)* Apply the survival test to every comment before writing it: would this still be true and useful to someone reading this file a year from now, who never saw the diff? If it only makes sense beside the diff, it is changelog — delete it and put it in the commit body.
- *CC-3 (MUST)* Default to zero comments. Declarative config — Terraform, DNS records, k8s manifests, CI YAML, Helm values — is self-describing and takes none. A resource named `dmarc-example-com` does not need a comment saying it is the DMARC record.
- *CC-4 (MAY)* Comment only when a future editor would actively break something without it: a non-obvious external constraint, a required out-of-band manual step, an invariant the surrounding code cannot show. One line. If it needs a paragraph it belongs in `plans/`, not inline.
- *CC-5 (MUST)* Before every commit, re-read the comment lines I added: `git diff --cached | grep '^+' | grep -E '#|//|/*'`. Each hit must pass CC-2 on its own. Deleting is always an acceptable outcome. "I already wrote it", "it is only one line", and "this one is genuinely useful" are not exemptions — the last one is the exact thought that precedes every violation.
- *CC-6 (MUST)* Applies to comments I edit as well as ones I add. When a change invalidates an existing comment, the default action is DELETE, not rewrite it into a new narrative.
```
Yes, I am aware that claude mostly generated this, and it can probably be better and/or more succinct.