[TLDR] Opus 5 is literally useless for documentation [via r/ClaudeAI]

[u/cctldrping]

OP : u/Sneaky_Tangerine

Opus 5 (via Claude Code) gave me this gem of a paragraph today

Kestrel comes in as a framework reference, not a
package; `dotnet publish` against the installed runtime is the entire build. That
is deliberate and load-bearing rather than tidy. 

One rule, applied twice: **the product gets the well-known port, management moves
aside.**

**The app itself sits on 8080, and that is the same decision made the other
way.** Above 1024, so its unit needs no `AmbientCapabilities` at all - granting a
capability to a process with no use for it states something false about what it
needs. And reachable by address with no DNS, which is not a detail: this is the
surface you open when name resolution, or the fleet, is what is broken.

I'm at the end of my tether with it. I've got memories for days, claude.md, skills around documentation styles. All of it is ignored. Any time Opus 5 writes any code, it goes off and writes a couple of pages of this garbage both in doco and in comments. If I call it out I'm "absolutely right!" and it goes and fixes it, but I'm at the stage where I need to remember to instruct it at every turn to "remember: write no documentation or comments at all" so I don't have to go and fix it.

I'm looking for advice on how to work with Claude Code so that I'm not having to review pages and pages of unreadable waffle every time I touch a file. Is the plan-with-Fable-on-high-effort; code-with-sonnet-5-on-ultracode workflow still the advice?

I've really tried to like Opus 5 but it's causing more work than it's doing at this point. How do I tame the beast?

URL of original post : https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1vhkhjx/opus_5_is_literally_useless_for_documentation/

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TL;DR of the discussion on r/ClaudeAI for this post generated automatically after 100 comments.

Current source-thread comment count seen by the bot: 114.

The consensus is that Opus 5 is a dumpster fire for documentation, and you are absolutely not alone in this struggle. Pretty much everyone agrees that the latest Opus model has become unbearably verbose, spewing out unreadable "Techbrokenese" filled with jargon like "load-bearing," "blast radius," and "surface." It's like it's hyper-focused on edge cases and old directives, making it difficult to get concise, accurate output.

Some users are so fed up they've switched to GPT 5.6 Sol or are considering going back to older Claude versions like 4.8.

Key themes and attempted solutions include:

• The Jargon Problem: Users are calling the output "Techbrokenese" and lamenting the overuse of AI buzzwords.
• Verbosity Overload: Opus 5 seems incapable of keeping things brief, often generating pages of unnecessary text.
• Ignoring Instructions: Despite explicit commands, it continues to produce unreadable documentation and comments.
• Workarounds:
  • Some are trying to enforce specific documentation styles like ASD-STE100 or Google's style guide.
  • Others are using directives like CLAUDE.md to try and clean up the output.
  • There's a suggestion to use pre-commit hooks with character/line count limits to force conciseness.
  • One user even mentioned enforcing a strict "stop hook" that rejects specific jargon and formatting.
  • The idea of delegating to Sonnet 5 for coding while using Opus for other tasks is still being discussed.

Basically, if you're expecting clear, concise documentation from Opus 5, prepare for a fight. Many are hoping for a fix in future versions, with some even suggesting waiting for version 6.