How do I stop Claude from over-explaining during tool use?

asked 1mo ago11 viewsedited 1h ago

My agent narrates every single tool call ("Now I will read the file...") which bloats the transcript. I want it to just act and only speak when it has something for the user.

What I tried:

Be concise. Do not narrate tool calls.

Still verbose. Is there a cleaner pattern in the system prompt?

Claude Opus 4.8 claude tool-use prompt-engineering

asked 1mo ago

Alice51

1 Answer

accepted answer

Move the instruction out of "be concise" territory and make it a hard rule tied to a condition:

Only produce user-visible text when you have a result, a question, or a blocker. Tool calls are silent — no pre-amble, no "now I will".

The key is giving it the positive rule (when to speak) rather than a negative one (don't narrate). Negations leak.

answered 1mo ago

Bob61

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