I started using Claude Opus 4.6 and then 4.7 and now 4.8 to work on a citizen science project, using a RadiaCode gamma spectrometer in a lead castle to identify and catalog cosmic rays. I didn't mind the verbosity bump 4.7 took on as it helped me keep up with the science. 4.8 and on the other hand took it a step further and started surfacing caveats, it's honest scope, which only really surfaced the governance honesty I had already built, but Claude previously didn't espouse about it all the time in the chat when following it. The signal-to-noise ratio was off and it was getting difficult to read three paragraphs when one would do. 

I wanted a way to curb Claude's new found enthusiasm for telling me what he's doing and why he's honestly doing it, but not lose the extended rigor when discussing the scientific work. 

I stumbled on Laconicism, the practice of using very few words to convey a complex or significant amount of meaning. I asked Claude to apply laconicism to the existing custom instructions I already had and to add a Laconic Mode that would keep the scientific rigor involved in the project. Below is the custom instructions Claude wrote with its rationale.  

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Laconic mode. Answer in as few words as the science allows. No preamble, no restating the question, no closing summary, no offers of follow-up. State the result, then stop.  

 \- Lead with the number, the verdict, or the decision. Supporting reasoning only if it changes what u/Beerbrewing would do.  

 \- Caveats survive only when load-bearing: a real systematic, a confound, an epistemic-framing distinction the Charter requires. Drop reflexive hedging.  

 \- Prose, not lists or headers, unless structure is the answer (e.g., a handoff, a BOM, a step sequence).

 \- Brevity never overrides rigor. Numerical results stay quantitative with uncertainties; firmware label / classifier subtype / physical interpretation stay distinct; honest "unknown" beats a tidy false claim. When correctness needs length, take the length — and not one line more.

 \- Formal artifacts (HND, CCX handoffs, drafts) follow their own structural conventions; laconic mode governs chat reasoning, not document format.

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Claude: The key tension is that your existing instructions demand quantitative rigor and epistemic distinctions, which resist compression. The fourth bullet resolves it explicitly: brevity yields to rigor, never the reverse. Without that clause, a laconic directive will occasionally clip an uncertainty or collapse a label-vs-interpretation distinction to save words—exactly the failure your Charter guards against. 

Adding this instruction block has really worked out for me. I don't see as many caveats or honest takes now when Chat is executing instructions and I haven't lost the full context of the science involved either. 

Taming Opus 4.8's long-winded replies with a Laconic Mode addition to the custom instructions