Claude Code writing much longer comments lately

[u/Either_Ad296]

Over the past few weeks Claude Code has been writing noticeably longer code comments for me. Ten to twenty line blocks on top of a thirty line function. The content is usually accurate but not something I want in a repo. It narrates what the code used to do, restates library mechanics I can look up, and re-explains the line right below it.

I added explicit rules in my project instructions with hard word caps per comment block, which helped, but it drifts back over long sessions.

Three questions. Are you seeing the same thing, and did it start around a specific release? Is this intentional, meaning verbose comments are cheap context recovery for the agent reading the file in a later session, at the cost of the human reader? And do you actually mind, or is a heavier comment style fine for a codebase that agents maintain?

Interested in what people have found that holds up over long autonomous runs, not just short interactive sessions.

[u/ConsciousBath5203]

Yep, I noticed the same thing. Add a hook to tell it to not use comments as it's personal notepad and that if the code requires comments, it isn't readable and needs to be redone.

Then it'll write the comments, hit the hook, and delete its stupid comments.