In the past, I didn’t love the Opus 5 responses. It didn’t bother me as much as some people who’ve posted about it, but it was not ideal. I added the following instruction to the global CLAUDE.md (on Windows, username.claude\CLAUDE.md)
Response Style
Responses to the user should be brief and specific to the request. Do not provide too much explanation. The user can request additional information if needed. I don’t know if it’s this instruction, or if Anthropic made other changes, but the responses have greatly improved. For me, it’s almost perfect. I didn’t get around to trying the concise setting, because now it’s fine as it is. Contrary to what others may say, Opus 5 medium effort is really outstanding! I’ve used Opus since 4.5 and, for my projects, Opus 5 medium effort is the best. I don’t know if high, extra high, etc. is any better because I’ve never needed to use the higher settings. While 4.5 and 4.6 communicated a bit better, I think the thinking and coding on Opus 5 is stronger. And the results have been consistently better. Anyway, if you’re having problems with Opus 5 response style, try the instruction above, or some variation. Another post said an instruction should have a trigger, to better compel its use. I haven’t tried that yet, but you could also try prepending something like “When responding to the user, your response should be …” to the instruction. HTH submitted by /u/Anxious-Turnover-631
Originally posted by u/Anxious-Turnover-631 on r/ClaudeCode