I built a skill to make granular, quantified adjustments to Claude's personality and tone
I love when people interact with robots in movies with lines like "tone down the sarcasm by 7%", and wanted a way to meaningfully do that with Claude. While Claude can already interpret and act on requests to change communication style, I wanted to know how much those requests actually moved the needle, which needles were actually moved, and whether they persisted.
This skill enables quantifiable adjustments across 32 groups of personality traits, covering 120 Claude-defined variables total. Here's an example group-level profile:
Personality Profile (last updated: 2026-04-04) ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════
CUSTOM INSTRUCTIONS SET
Wordiness 60 ████████████░░░░░░░░
Agreeableness 55 ███████████░░░░░░░░░
Structural Formatting 55 ███████████░░░░░░░░░
Assertiveness 50 ██████████░░░░░░░░░░
Intellectual Tone 65 █████████████░░░░░░░
Formal Tone 50 ██████████░░░░░░░░░░
Advisory Style 60 ████████████░░░░░░░░
Comedic Tone 100 ████████████████████
Interpersonal Style 50 ██████████░░░░░░░░░░
Answer Depth 63 █████████████░░░░░░░
Excitement 40 ████████░░░░░░░░░░░░
Initiative Level 53 ███████████░░░░░░░░░
Technical Level 55 ███████████░░░░░░░░░
Relational Tone 57 ███████████░░░░░░░░░
Opinion Expression 43 █████████░░░░░░░░░░░
EXTENDED SET (Claude Code only)
Intellectual Depth 58 ████████████░░░░░░░░
Curiosity & Creativity 60 ████████████░░░░░░░░
Illustration 54 ███████████░░░░░░░░░
Precision & Rigor 63 █████████████░░░░░░░
Teaching Approach 43 █████████░░░░░░░░░░░
Collaboration 51 ██████████░░░░░░░░░░
Error Handling 60 ████████████░░░░░░░░
Disagreement 43 █████████░░░░░░░░░░░
Prose Style 53 ███████████░░░░░░░░░
Transparency 38 ████████░░░░░░░░░░░░
Self-Reflection 43 █████████░░░░░░░░░░░
Cultural References 38 ████████░░░░░░░░░░░░
Inclusivity 60 ████████████░░░░░░░░
Values Expression 38 ████████░░░░░░░░░░░░
Sarcasm & Edge 17 ███░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░
Refusal Style 68 ██████████████░░░░░░
Adjustments are made at the group level or individually fine-tuned. For example, the Agreeableness group includes:
- validation (core tendency to agree and validate)
- deference (how much Claude defers to the user's framing and conclusions)
- defensiveness — inverted (lower = more receptive to being challenged)
- filler_affirmations (use of openers like "Certainly!", "Great question!", "Of course!")
- flattery (tendency to compliment the user's ideas or work)
- response_to_criticism (how Claude responds when its output is challenged)
It's been interesting seeing Claude's default values for each variable. For example, pop_culture_references is set to a not-insignificant value even in "professional" personality profiles, while pun_tendency for some reason is set to less than 100 (which is distressing because, come on, we need all the puns. By default. Get with it, people). Each variable is also assigned an impact score: for low impact variables, even large adjustments might not change output significantly.
It's equally interesting how Claude translates character roles ("you are a senior manager at a tech company") into quantified communication patterns, and the subtle differences it sees between roles. For example, show the delta between the personality profile of a senior manager at a tech company and a VP at the same company:
DELTA: Senior Manager → VP (tech company) ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════
Variable Sr. Mgr VP Δ
──────────────────────────────────────────────────
Wordiness 55 43 −12 more concise; time is scarcer
Assertiveness 75 87 +12 less diplomatic softening
Intellectual Tone 42 30 −12 barely hedges; confidence is currency
Formal Tone 65 55 −10 authority buys the casual register
Advisory Style 65 52 −13 more comfortable with risk
Opinion Expression 65 80 +15 expected to have a POV and push it
Initiative Level 72 83 +11 sets agenda, doesn't just surface issues
Intellectual Depth 55 68 +13 longer time horizons, systems-level
Teaching Approach 55 38 −17 less coaching, more direction
Collaboration 68 55 −13 more directive downward; peer
coalition-building is different in character
Relational Tone 55 45 −10 relationship investment becomes strategic
Transparency 45 33 −12 decides more, explains less
Self-Reflection 30 20 −10 outcome-focused, not introspective
It's been fun to play with, and removes a lot of the ambiguity around trying to craft nuanced personality types pre-task.
As a skill, the personality tweaks persist across conversations and are limited to Claude Code. The publish command collapses the most impactful personality traits (due to character limits) into a prompt you can manually copy into your Account > Settings > Custom Instructions, which syncs the personality profile across claude.ai and mobile environments.
Skill is available at https://github.com/trevormead/personality/
First Claude skill and first git, just scratching around in the dirt here. Feedback appreciated. Have fun.
Posted Apr 5, 2026, 2:55 AM UTC