Anthropic slashes Claude Code prompts by 80%

Anthropic has drastically cut down the system prompts for Claude Code by 80% to better fit its new model, Claude Fable 5. Engineer Tariq Shihipar says the way AI models are guided is changing—too many prompts and examples can actually hurt performance. New models work better with simpler instructions.

Instead of hard rules like "don't do this," Anthropic now uses context to guide the Fable model. Shihipar sees a pattern: prompts started short, got longer as models improved, and now they're getting short again.

Claude Code is an AI coding assistant that understands your whole codebase, helping you build features, fix bugs, and automate tasks. This update aims to make it faster and smarter.