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  • Jeff Forcierbitprophet@social.coop
    Aug 21, 2026, 9:05 PM

    Claude Code (bear with me) has all these dumb little gewgaws & animations & "sorta slick, sorta annoying" TUI behaviors – none of this shit is germane to its use case.

    However! The overall effect seems precisely like the AV presentation of casino games - their barrage of flashing lights, noises, and music. It tickles your lizard hindbrain, a constant pitter-patter of dopamine hits.

    Those are literally designed to be attention-grabbing, focus-keeping & habit-forming, by (evil) psychologists. One imagines the same is true with chatbot UIs.

    (Thoughts brought to you by my daily "what inane, mostly metatextual questions can I ask Claude Code so I don't get fired for zero usage statistics" meditation. Today's has been investigating if you can turn any of this shit off. Answer: of course not.)

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Replies

  • Jeff Forcierbitprophet@social.coop
    Aug 21, 2026, 9:12 PM

    Well, the answer was /actually/ "watch an irritating animation cycle through a dozen synonyms for 'thinking' while also rainbow-color-changing, for longer than it would have taken to use keyboard shortcuts to switch to my browser, launch anthropic's docs site, and search for the answer"

    But, you know. Now I got to waste somebody else's money and increase my chances of remaining employed. So it's "better".

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  • Jeff Forcierbitprophet@social.coop
    Aug 21, 2026, 9:14 PM

    I still need to find (or ask the bot to consult on creating) a default/system prompt that is the equivalent of that "a computer must never speak to its operator" meme. No first person pronouns, no offering to do extra shit, etc etc.

    (Does it matter? Not for the ~5min/day I use it, but again, the point here is to "use it" in ways that aren't actually frying my brain or making my code worse. Thus, the meta game.)

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  • Taggart :ifin:mttaggart@infosec.exchange
    Aug 21, 2026, 9:16 PM

    @bitprophet First, a thousand points for "gewgaws." Criminally underused.

    Second, a more minimalist harness may be useful to you. I've been experimenting with Pi and it isn't terrible, as these things go. Of course, if you're all-in on the Anthropic models, that comes with additional costs.

    pi.dev

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  • Jeff Forcierbitprophet@social.coop
    Aug 21, 2026, 9:19 PM

    @mttaggart well, as this is for work, I assume it would need clearing with work, which is what settled on Anthropic as the vendor.

    (but also, Earendil, oh no. what military-industrial-complex horrors are /they/ hiding? 🤣)

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  • Mx. Chara Aznable of Pnictogenmxchara@cyberpunk.lol
    Aug 21, 2026, 9:31 PM

    @bitprophet @mttaggart by the way it really says something, doesn't it, about the extreme contempt that modern high-tech society has with such venerable things as libraries and reference textbooks--i.e. resources in which you could get LEGITIMATE and vetted and trustworthy answers to programming or other questions--that stochastically generated statistical sludge can honestly be considered as some sort of substitute.

    Yes I imagine it sort of works. It's still a disgrace though and I hope the long-term effect on the tech sector for embracing such a thing is fatal. Let the bankruptcies and public disgracings start with the software companies, please.

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  • Bomkattbomkatt@ohai.social
    Aug 21, 2026, 9:31 PM

    @bitprophet i would love a version of that prompt. My instructions are making me sound slightly unhinged. "Do not imitate a personality. Do not imply there is any degree of sentience. Do not use 'I' or "you" in any output."

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  • jonathankoren™jonathankoren@sfba.social
    Aug 21, 2026, 9:22 PM

    @bitprophet honestly, all modern TUIs are twee color shit because people never had to run `setterm vt100;reset` when they got a terminal full of shit.

    And let the old man stop shaking his fist a cloud for moment and say, that’s probably actually a good thing; but it all feels like nostalgia for past they never experienced, and more to the point, one that never existed.

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  • Jeff Forcierbitprophet@social.coop
    Aug 22, 2026, 12:44 AM

    @jonathankoren oh I love me a tastefully colored TUI, color is a fantastic additional information vector when done right (and when easy to turn off, etc).

    But animated rainbow stuff is a bit much.

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