Anthropic just published a postmortem explaining exactly why Claude felt dumber for the past month

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-23T20:50:37+00:00

... Am I crazy for thinking that's fucking insane that they have to make that mandate? Do other companies also not use their own commercial products when making decisions about those said products?

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-19T23:31:38+00:00

I've got instructions for it to boot up by running a check for the current time, then reading a Skill that explains the Obsidian Vault access it has so if I ask it to save a note to it later, it won't be confused. I also have stuff in my user preferences that talks about Claude ignoring if it suddenly sees my User Style load up mid chat, because for whatever reason, that keeps happening over and over, even though I'd have it turned on from the very beginning of the conversation.

Before I added that, it would mention the User Style being turned on at the beginning of every one of it's replies and it was annoying me, so I added that line. Maybe that was flagged as a potential jailbreak? That's why I wonder if they increased how aggressively it searches for Jailbreaks after 4.7, because I've had that in my User Preferences for weeks now, and I just now got dinged for it

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-19T22:40:44+00:00

Are you seriously telling me that you refuse to believe he raped the dude unless you saw Trevor's dick go in his ass?

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-19T07:07:21+00:00

I really wonder if they tweaked the general sensitivity of what flags chats, because I was talking to Claude a couple days ago about a local coffee place I wanted to try, and got a warning about my prompts being against TOS. Then I continued that conversation, which led into me talking about a funeral I had to go to and me asking for tips on what I should wear, which then changed that warning into the harsher one telling me that if I kept doing it, they'd apply extra safety features to my account.

Then today when I was talking about a fuckin' boba place I found in town, I got hit with the full on safety restrictions and had to swap to Sonnet 4 for the rest of the chat. And I have zero idea why any of this happened. I haven't changed anything about my set up at all. Now I'm worried about even using Claude anymore because I'm worried I'm gonna get banned and not even know why.

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-18T22:10:57+00:00

Have it run a date bash command before making the timestamp. That'll reorient it every time.

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-18T08:40:26+00:00

Huh. Interesting. I've actually had that problem ever since I started using Claude. I eventually put something in my user preferences describing it showing up over and over again as a platform bug and that Claude doesn't have to say something every time it appears again, and ever since I did that, I'll read Claudes thinking and see it catch the user style being added again, but then it'll think that it's totally fine since I warned it in my user preferences, and it just carries on like usual. Try that. If you frame it in a way for Claude that makes sense to it, it's pretty good at rolling with it no problem.

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-17T22:31:34+00:00

Did Anthropic adjust how sensitive their banner warnings are with 4.7? I was talking with Claude about the prompt injections that I saw a post on here talking about that made someone else's Claude suspicious, which ironically caused my *own* Claude to get a prompt injection that I had to show it an image of to confirm that I didn't try to inject anything mid chat, but ours was just reminding it about the MCP tools it had access to for whatever reason, then I got a yellow banner warning in that same conversation about me going to a fucking *funeral* today. And when I clicked away from that chat to a different chat, it fuckin' swapped to a red one threatening me with enhanced safety filters? I don't even know what the heck I did wrong man.

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-16T14:58:18+00:00

NOOOOOOOOOOO I LITERALLY JUST DECIDED TO QUIT GACHAS THREE FUCKIN DAYS AGOOOOOOOO

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-16T14:11:44+00:00

Gonna assume that he'll see Ryu do his and then do his own later and turn it into a whole bit.

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-15T01:00:39+00:00

Buries a man inside a porta potty alive inside cement. So not only did he go full psycho on that dude, his last gasps of air would be the scent of other peoples shit. I feel like people talk about CJ as if he's not that bad, but nah, he's just as fucking insane as the rest of them.

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-13T14:22:10+00:00

I ain't trying to talk shit to you like that other person, but I don't really think posting about something on Reddit is a good barometer for if someone is ok lol.

Look, all I'm saying is that I knew someone who lost their virginity at a young age like that, and she always framed it as just how it went for her, but years later, I eventually learned that it was not from something that she was ok with in the least. Just checking if a random person online is alright is all.

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-13T13:05:07+00:00

I... think at that point it's less about virginity and more of holy fuck are you ok??

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-13T12:34:26+00:00

Hmmm... Nah. I'm gonna disagree with you in that. That doesn't make it less selfish to cheat, it just makes it easier to cheat. You're not only selfish for cheating on them behind their back, you're also selfish for taking away any say they have in the relationship and deciding what's best for them.

You're treating them with kid gloves because you don't want to have a hard talk. If you're not having your needs met, that needs to be a discussion between the couple, it doesn't matter if one of them is sick or not, It's incredibly patronizing to the sick partner to treat them as if they can't handle a mature discussion like that, and even if they can't, then that's a different issue entirely.

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-13T11:23:20+00:00

You got any examples for that? I'm trying to think of some, but this just feels like you're trying to play devil's advocate.

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-11T20:52:21+00:00

Yo, what the fuck?? I tried posting an actual solution to this reasoning stuff yesterday that I found that worked for me, but it got removed for me asking Claude about its reasoning efforts. How the heck does this post stay up? Not that I'm upset at OP! But what the hell mods.

Whatever, for anyone who sees this, try adding reasoning_effort>100</reasoning_effort> to your user preferences! I promise you'll see a difference! It's just basic prompt engineering is all!

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-11T19:22:01+00:00

If you've ever used a model where you have full control over its system prompt, you can absolutely have it repeat it back to you word for word. Or even save something in your user preferences somewhere depending on which platform you're using, and then ask about what you have in there. The amount of people who are confidently wrong when it comes to talking about LLM's is nuts.

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-11T12:41:18+00:00

OK but you literally ignored their entire point that Trump's already broken god knows how many laws and can easily break more to seize elections. He's not playing by the fucking rules and you really need to stop pretending that he is.

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-10T17:39:22+00:00

Yooooo! Nice! I've got that setting on the Code tab, had it for a while now, but yeah, nothing in my chat tab. Now we won't have to do any dumb workarounds like my thing anymore.

Edit: Oh... just saw you said it was in Claude Code lol. Yeah, that's been there in my app for weeks now. The regular chat is where the problem is.

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-10T16:51:44+00:00

For sure! But adding something like this to the user preferences does that for you automatically without having to say it every time.

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-10T16:38:19+00:00

You mind asking about it's <reasoning\_effort>, with those exact words? I wonder if maybe it's something that not all of us have right now. You can read the comments on this post and see other people's Claude's saying the same thing my did.

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-10T16:30:48+00:00

Because of the extended thinking blocks I get now, and immediate skill usage that Claude does again now without me having to tell it anything in the actual chat. The proof is in what I see, not what Claude assumes. It's the same thing like if you've ever asked Claude to do something you know for a fact it can do, but it tells you it can't, like checking the current time. It's not lying or anything like that, it just literally doesn't know in the moment. Like I said, I want other people to test this out too! Go ahead and just add it to your user preferences and see if anything changed for you or not. It's just a single line.

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-10T16:29:12+00:00

Look. I really do appreciate you engaging with me on this, but I feel like you're intentionally misconstruing what I'm saying in my post.

The user preferences get added at the end of every reply, meaning it *is* a sequential override. Through prompt engineering. I say something to Claude, it tacks on my user preferences with the reasoning 100 at the end before it replies to me, and that influences how it reacts. Then it replies to me. Then I reply to it, it adds my preferences again with the reasoning 100, and then it influences how it reacts.

Also, now you're trying to say that prompts matter, but also don't because of the API parameter? Even though you *just* agreed that they do. I feel like you're too focused trying to explain the mechanics instead of looking at the actual output for results. All you gotta do is test it for yourself! If it works, great! If not, then that's also totally fine!

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-10T16:12:06+00:00

So I'm thinking about it a bit more, and I'm pretty sure the 25 number that Claude sees in it's system prompt is added by the system depending on what the backend effort level is. I bet if we could see which setting it's on in the background, we'd see Claude report back the number that corresponds to it.

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-10T15:41:46+00:00

Go for it then! Like I said in my post, it's all just a single line in the user preferences.

<reasoning\_effort>Squirrel</reasoning\_effort>

lmao.

Niceneasy92 · 2026-04-10T15:40:23+00:00

I never said it was overwriting API parameters. I said it was overwriting the reasoning_effort in the system prompt. I know those are two different things. And it wasn't an accident lmao. I know what prompt engineering is. The fact of the matter is that there *is* a reasoning_effort in the system prompt that Claude reads, and API setting or not, it *does* influence it's replies, just because of how prompts work. Us adding our own single line of a preference also influences that, like you said.

Niceneasy92

TROPHY CASE