I've put a few lines in my CLAUDE.md to have it not do that, and avoid the top tedious rhetorical devices (super helpful when I have it write documentation). Still fighting with its natural tendency to insanely overcomplicate everything, that one seems really integral somehow.

I maintain a list of phrases I beg it not to use that it frequently ignores:

- smoking gun - blast radius - landed - spine - earned its keep - grammar - spike - cutover - bake - sprint, epic, story points (all Agile vocabulary) - paper-cuts - amazing, incredible, perfect

Among all the claude-isms, i understand the hate for load-bearing the least. It was definitely part of tech argot prior to the LLM revolution.

This is a minor nit, but why is OP's script a Python script with a .sh extension? I know the extension doesn't "matter", but if I see a .sh extension I'm expecting a Bash script.

My CLAUDE.md has "don't talk like a Hacker News commentator". It helps a surprising amount.

I'll make sure that the script is idempotent.

Honestly? I don't really mind, and I even quite like it!

The thing is, "load-bearing" is a useful phrase when discussing architecture. What would you rather have it say, that has all the same nuances in as few words?

It's kind of like those sports metaphors that often get used in management-speak, like sending some important email "at close of play". Sure, they can sound a bit weird, but they're often useful -- they capture common concepts in a clear and pithy way.

Jargon isn't always just for obfuscation, good jargon exists because we needed a short word for the complicated thing that frequently comes up.

Usefulness aside, I quite like that Claude Code and other LLMs have their own weird way of speaking. Back in the day we always imagined robots and computers would talk like HAL or Spock; turns out that they talk more like Troi instead. Is that so bad? It reminds you that you're talking to an LLM, and as long as you're not lazy, it spurs you to rephrase things in your own words.

I had claude write itself a post-message hook that regex's the message for any variant of "You're right" and launch a full-screen transparent confetti effect.

I confess I have instructions in my CLAUDE.md to avoid such cliches. But I think it's important to consider that we don't really know what subtext an LLM is associating with a given idiom/analogy/etc. It could be much different than the subtext a human would associate with that choice of words, conveying additional details which are only meaningful to the LLM itself. So impeding its ability to talk in the manner it prefers could subtly hinder its performance.

    replacements = {
        "seam": "whatchamacallit",

That seems like it would work whatchamacallitlessly.