I've found Claude useless for writing purposes (even rubber-duck brainstorming), because it eventually but inevitably makes everything more and more sesquipedalian, ignoring all instructions to the contrary, until every response is just a garbage mess of purple prose rephrasing the same thing over and over again.
I don't know what the deal is, but it's a failure state I've seen consistently enough that I suspect it has to be some kind of issue at the intersection of training material and the long context window.
I wanted to like Claude but for all my trying I could not get even Opus to understand brevity. I found myself repeating variations of "do not over-explain. just give brief answers until I ask for more" over and over until I cancelled my subscription in frustration.
I am sure there is a technical skill in getting Claude to shut the hell up and answer, but I shouldn't have to suss out its arcane secrets. There should be a checkbox.
Thank you for introducing me to "sesquipedalian", a word I've never seen before in over 20 years of venturing in the anglosphere, but one which I, as a native speaker of an Awful (and very sesquipedalian) Language, instantly fell in love with. :)
I don't know what the deal is, but it's a failure state I've seen consistently enough that I suspect it has to be some kind of issue at the intersection of training material and the long context window.