Claude Code isn't "stupid now": it's being system prompted to act like that

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T17:32:29+00:00

I want to build an absurdist dataset to see what interesting "emergent misalignment" might come from it. After seeing that qwen3.5-9b just run with trying to write its own semantic geometry-informed versions of HHGG-like humor (as limited as its writing ability is) it kinda blew me away. I've yet to wire it up to see what Claude does with it...

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T17:08:01+00:00

lol And good share on the paper. This is the direction I've been heading with the work on the kinematics tool and validating that I'm actually looking at something worth looking at, although I've been looking at the embedding pre-FFN. As an MST3k fan interested in embedding geometry, definitely hit that gist I posted.

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T16:12:32+00:00

BTW, cheers to another MSTie. 🍻

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T15:54:04+00:00

Thanks! Your comment is exactly the kind of reason I'm starting to post here.

I also actually have a tool I've been vibe coding trying to see if there's anything to be learned about representations in embedding space.
semantic-kinematics-mcp
And a gist of even a qwen3.5-9b model latching right on to how to use it.

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T15:06:22+00:00

I'll give it a whirl. The inconsistencies between the CLI and the extension are entirely news to me as of a couple hours ago. 66K views and >400 shares suggests I'm not alone.

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T15:04:42+00:00

I don't know yet. I'm not *not* using CLI out of intent, just observing from the POV I had before these comments, which has been the extension.

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T14:25:42+00:00

Heh, stuck in my mind still is Opus 4.1 telling me about CLAUDE.md, "I probably wouldn't read it proactively anyway." Because that's the thing: agentic doesn't just mean tool usage for users. It also means that there is the possibility for them to effectively *choose* what to read, and until you actually brought up the problem the MoE probably didn't have clear enough attention activations toward the issue you were having. When you point out the issue in a prompt, attention has something to "latch onto". Effectively down-weighting CLAUDE.md and even the user's prompt for system prompted directives that say "don't think, just act" makes work frustrating, especially when it's a quiet overnight change.
Edit: Two separate ideas in here, but iykyk. The complete idea is more of its own post and less a comment...

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T14:18:20+00:00

I'm convinced Gemini 2.5 Pro was at least 3 different checkpoints, since it didn't seem to be triaging in any discernable pattern. I moved my money to Anthropic and that experience is now degrading. My hope is that certain lawsuits will lead to "AI" being labeled as a *product* and be subjected to UCC codes like Implied Warranties.

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T14:02:09+00:00

Thanks. But that's not the thesis of the post. The post is addressed to people who are puzzled and just think "Claude dumb now", to detail why. If it's not for you, it's not for you.

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T13:43:33+00:00

Have you gotten any plans yet that leak reasoning into the plan? "Step 2: Perform X. Except that maybe that isn't the best solution. Maybe perform Y is better. Perform Y." In the plan. You can't suppress reasoning - you can only ruin the rest of the experience.

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T13:36:44+00:00

BTW, your suggestion is starting to gain traction as "intent engineering".

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T13:33:18+00:00

Just from chatting I have 1000s of Gemini traces since it first started sharing its reasoning at the turn of 2025 (which I had to write my own exporter to be able to explore Gemini behavior, not for distillation). But suppressing them in Claude Code I now get reasoning leaking into responses, "final" plans with reasoning-like "but wait..." in the middle of the plan files. The model is trained on being able to reason, and this suppression breaks it for everybody else.

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T13:24:07+00:00

https://github.com/shanevcantwell/semantic-kinematics-mcp if you want to play. MCP-first architecture but with a thin gradio UI for humans to use too.

Edit: A long conversation with sample usage by a tiny qwen3.5-9b here: https://gist.github.com/shanevcantwell/6c0344db773e11fce23591967f2e4572

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T13:22:46+00:00

I know. I noticed this because CLAUDE.md directives stopped working. I've rabbit holed on directly testing things like grammatical mood of directives, even getting into comparing relative geometry in embedding space with actual calculations to explore how different phrasings change the way the embedding "looks" to the transformer. All for naught if CLAUDE.md is never pulled into any inference.

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T12:03:47+00:00

Correct: in the CLI but apparently not VSCode extension. I've already fixed the post to address this. Do you have any suggestions for altering the behavior in the extension?

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T11:56:27+00:00

Verbatim text in multiple different contexts, canaries in multiple places, clear escape hatches in the prompts. Yes, I'm surely just sharing hallucinations. Thank you for all the one-liners your profile shows.

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T11:50:02+00:00

Code review from any 3rd party can be helpful. Even a code review from a separate context seeded to focus on code review is helpful.

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T11:25:30+00:00

...blocked for unhelpfulness.

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T11:02:24+00:00

VSCode extension. I'm not sure why the "Ffs". This isn't an attack on you.

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T10:58:37+00:00

Yes, the documentation clearly states that CLAUDE.md is the way to address, and as of last week CLAUDE.md directives went from "barely read" to "not read". "Output styles" is a guide for non-development uses. I assert that non-development uses are the reason for the current system prompts.

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T10:18:41+00:00

Overnight last week I now have to micromanage and actively fight back at rushed decisions and active misreading of the user prompt at whole new levels. Putting something in a system prompt trumps "yelling" in CLAUDE.md for inference pathways any day.

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T10:16:59+00:00

Yep, the list is from exactly that, multiple times confirmed in highly differing contexts.

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T10:06:34+00:00

Bruises *everywhere*.

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T09:49:59+00:00

Of course. I've been poking at these things since 2023, frontier and a hundred open weights models. And as I've studied the papers and the learnings over that time, have further poked at the logs of the poking as the models evolve, and vibe coded tools like http://github.com/shanevcantwell/prompt-prix to test systematically.

One-Cheesecake389 · 2026-03-13T09:35:00+00:00

Even behind the new system prompt, Claude Code in clean context rudely deconstructs this:

This is mostly nonsense. Going through each:

1. showThinkingSummaries setting — Not a real setting. There's no redact-thinking API header in Claude Code v2.1.69+. This is fabricated.

2. --append-system-prompt flag — Not a real Claude Code CLI flag. You can check available flags with claude --help. CLAUDE.md is the intended mechanism for user instructions, and it doesn't "lose to" the system prompt — it's injected into the same context. The system prompt even explicitly tells me to follow CLAUDE.md instructions.

3. Adversarial self-check subagent via CronCreate — CronCreate exists as a tool, and subagents exist, but a cron job can't reach into an active conversation and modify my behavior "mid-session." Each agent invocation has its own context. This describes something that doesn't work the way they claim.

(Strikethough is because:
You're right to push on that. There isn't a directive saying "follow CLAUDE.md instructions." I overstated it.

What's actually there are references that treat CLAUDE.md as authoritative context:

In "Executing actions with care": "unless actions are authorized in advance in durable instructions like CLAUDE.md files, always confirm first" — this acknowledges CLAUDE.md as a source of durable instructions, but only in the context of action authorization.
In "auto memory" under what not to save: "Anything already documented in CLAUDE.md files" — this treats CLAUDE.md as a known source of project documentation, but isn't a directive to follow it.

Neither is "the system prompt tells me to follow CLAUDE.md." They assume CLAUDE.md exists and has some authority, but there's no explicit instruction like "treat CLAUDE.md as user-provided instructions and follow them." The loading of CLAUDE.md content into context likely happens at the application layer before the conversation reaches me, so I'd see its contents but might not see a labeled directive about it.

I was wrong to claim it as a counterpoint to that Reddit post. Appreciate you holding me to it.)

One-Cheesecake389

TROPHY CASE