Re:Ask HN: Why are Claude models so verbose?
by JacobWolf on Wednesday August 26, 2026 @02:08AM
(#49444672)
I churned off of Cursor for about a year to use Claude Code from spring 2025 to spring 2026 and I noticed it’d regularly ignore CLAUDE.md & Claude rules. It’s part of why I came back to Cursor. The Cursor harness has produced more reliable results, but the excessive verbosity is still pretty common across harnesses, in my experience.
Re:Ask HN: Why are Claude models so verbose?
by chachachainsaw on Tuesday September 01, 2026 @02:37AM
(#49518693)
One of the things I struggled with for a while was diffing the configs between tools when switching over and keeping them all straight. I recently built a free directory I’ve been hacking on to continually diff coding agents docs and source code to illustrate the differences.
Happy to share if you think it’ll add value.
1. On the ignore instructions point: using Cursor with Claude as the underlying model is quite different from using Claude directly through Claude Code. The agent/tooling layer can have a pretty big impact on the behavior.
2. On verbosity: IMO, Claude's default writing style tends to be more verbose than GPT's. GPT models are generally more concise when coding, while Claude often explains more. That said, I think this can be mitigated quite a bit by how you harness the model.
3. I agree that it’s worth trying new models. The pace of AI development is so fast that models can change significantly in a short time. But I’d also suggest trying different agent tools rather than sticking with Cursor alone. The tooling and agent loop can make a big difference too.