I was hoping this was just a 4.7 quirk, but 4.8 is just as bad. I do a lot of work that requires subjective analysis and judgement, and in those areas, 4.7 and 4.8 are both major regressions from 4.6. If you have a list of objective, cut and dry steps then they’re great, but anything beyond that and it’s not that it necessarily can’t do the work, but it’s outright making excuses for why it doesn’t think the work is necessary. For example, if Opus is given a passage and told to scan through it for phrases that match certain general patterns and remove or rewrite them, 4.6 does this brilliantly, one-shot. 4.7 and 4.8 will - and I have hundreds of examples of logfiles like this - instead match the patterns but then make excuses for why they should be left intact. “This pattern matches but it’s load-bearing and needs to be left alone” is a common one, and another one is “This pattern matches but it’s strategic and needs to be left alone.” 4.7/4.8 will see the things that need doing, but it will then write excuses in its logfiles for why it WON’T do the work. It’s genuinely frustrating to give 4.7/4.8 extremely detailed sets of rules and guidelines, and see that it reads and understands them, but makes up excuses for not applying them. Looking forward to being told “change your instructions” (already done many times, in many ways, both on my own and led by 4.6/4.7/4.8 analyzing this issue), “git gud” and other such remarks. ;) submitted by /u/_ireadthings
Originally posted by u/_ireadthings on r/ClaudeCode