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DisclaimerUnofficial, and not affiliated with Anthropic. Nearly all of this is read straight out of what ships: npm bundles, captured prompts, published docs. Anthropic's own notes go in verbatim, marked as theirs. The rest is my reading, and every entry carries the strings behind it. If one looks wrong, vote it down and say why.

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Claude Code v2.1.98

Opus 4.6 Communication Style Tuning [Gradual Rollout]

What

Differentiated system prompt instructions for Opus 4.6 models that emphasize concise, anti-verbose communication and refined code quality guidance.

Status

Feature-flagged via quiet_salted_ember (server-controlled, only applies to Opus 4.6 models)

Details
  • When enabled, adds a "Communicating with the user" prompt section instructing the model to give brief updates at key moments rather than verbose explanations
  • Includes refined code quality instructions: "Default to writing no comments. Only add one when the WHY is non-obvious"
  • Adds anti-verbosity guidance as a separate prompt category
  • Includes refined instructions about not adding features/refactoring beyond what was asked
  • The cM6() gate function checks both the model family (must include "opus-4-6") and the quiet_salted_ember flag value
Evidence

Opus 4.6 prompt tuning (gated by quiet_salted_ember, search for "Default to writing no comments" and "Communicating with the user")

Strings lifted out of the shipped bundle, so the claim above can be checked against them.

Related

Other releases about the same thing. Found by shared names or similar wording; neither means one caused the other.

See this entry in the whole of v2.1.98 →