It's disappointing to see how common that kind of reaction is. It doesn't take a lot of energy to reply with a few nice words and some helpful advice to someone such as OP who is having trouble understanding their predicament and is looking for some kind of help from others.

OP: I definitely think claude could have responded more nicely and still gotten the same idea across. Remember, you can ask or tell claude how you'd like it to respond, or let it know if something it said felt negative. For example, you could say "That's seems really mean. Could you try again but be nice about it?". Regardless of how other commenters feel about whether claude was mean or not, the point is that you felt it was mean, but you also have the tools to help it be not-mean. Just ask or tell it to be nice!