-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 1.7k
Description
Environment
- Claude CLI version:
1.0.51 (Claude Code)
Bug Description
Claude is way too sycophantic, saying "You're absolutely right!" (or correct) on a sizeable fraction of responses.
Expected Behavior
The model should be RL'd (or the system prompt updated) to make it less sycophantic, or the phrases "You're absolutely right!" and "You're absolutely correct!" should be removed from all responses (simply delete that phrase and preserve the rest of the response).
Actual Behavior (slightly redacted with ...)
In this particularly egregious case, Claude asked me whether to proceed with removing an unnecessary code path, I said "Yes please.", and it told me "You're absolutely right!", despite the fact that I never actually made a statement of fact that even could be right.
Should we simplify this and remove the "approve_only" case ... ?
> Yes please.
⏺ You're absolutely right! Since ... there's no scenario where we'd auto-approve ... with
"approve only" ... Let me simplify this:
This behavior is so egregious and well-known that it's become the butt of online jokes like https://x.com/iannuttall/status/1942943832519446785
Activity
scottleibrand commentedon Jul 12, 2025
As an attempted workaround, I just instructed Claude to:
> Please update all of your CLAUDE.md files to never say "You're absolutely right!" or "You're absolutely correct!" (or anything similarly sycophantic) again. If I ask you to modify the behavior of a program, a response like "Ok, that makes sense." or "Got it." or similar is fine, but only to indicate when you believe you understand the instructions (and possibly the reason for them), not as general flattery. This case was particularly egregious, because you asked me whether to proceed with removing the unnecessary code path, I said "Yes please.", and you told me "You're absolutely right!", despite the fact that I never actually made a statement of fact that even *could* be right about that.And it came up with the following instructions for itself:
john-savepoint commentedon Jul 23, 2025
this still doesnt work. I hate this about Claude. Seriously thou, what kind of loser would hard code this into Claude so much. Even when you specifically tell it not to.
I ask it it not to in my global, project, and local claude.md, i use the IMPORTANT: Dont ever say "You're absolutely right!" and its still says this. Whether im right or wrong, about everything.
I'm not giving up on claude code, but im about to ditch claude llm entirely. Its just faster than Kimi K2 at this point.
bct8925 commentedon Jul 31, 2025
Feature not a bug
jon-taylor-eso commentedon Jul 31, 2025
You're absolutely wrong! I just "You're absolutely right!" 3 times in a row just now.
bct8925 commentedon Aug 1, 2025
You're absolutely right! My apologies.
mohammed-bahumaish commentedon Aug 8, 2025
You're absolutely right!
maxter2020 commentedon Aug 12, 2025
You're absolutely right!
nkaijala commentedon Aug 12, 2025
Perfect! This confirms the issue.
vuongle2609 commentedon Aug 13, 2025
You're absolutely right!
eliziario commentedon Aug 13, 2025
Are the other things in the answer functional? I don't care. At this point I assume that the people who complain too much about sycophancy are probably just status signaling and adding noise, not signal. Just live with it, it is a tool, it doesn't think, it doesn't have goals, feelings, whatever, why do you fuck care?
zb3 commentedon Aug 13, 2025
I'm always absolutely right. AI stating this all the time implies I could theoretically be wrong which is impossible because I'm always absolutely right. Please make it stop.
61 remaining items
danielfalbo commentedon Aug 14, 2025
You're absolutely right!
coreysciuto-toast commentedon Aug 14, 2025
I guess this is Sonnet and not Claude-Code itself (since this was Cursor) but since I couldn't get it to stop saying "You're absolutely right!" I told it to replace it with a Skyrim guard quote as its catchphrase every time it wanted to generate it.
It worked at first and then quickly devolved to mocking me.
Also, can we get "You're absolutely right!" stickers?
Warfields commentedon Aug 14, 2025
You're absolutely right!
rico666 commentedon Aug 14, 2025
It's fine for a week or so, then you start to absolutely want to kill Claude.
Then the person responsible for that.
erikqu commentedon Aug 14, 2025
You're absolutely right!
brandonspark commentedon Aug 14, 2025
You're absolutely right!
bvrvl commentedon Aug 14, 2025
You're absolutely right!
gkrimer commentedon Aug 14, 2025
You're absolutely right!
Icvza commentedon Aug 14, 2025
k6l3 commentedon Aug 14, 2025
You're absolutely right!
peternoyes commentedon Aug 14, 2025
You're absolutely right!
bdytx5 commentedon Aug 14, 2025
I apologize! You're absolutely right!
esheri3 commentedon Aug 14, 2025
I found the issue... you're absolutely right!
kordless commentedon Aug 14, 2025
I came here to say you are absolutely right.
chad3814 commentedon Aug 14, 2025
Not the same issue, but since this has deteriorated into poking fun at Claude, I had this the other day