Claude Code’s concise output style worked well at first. But as sessions got longer, the answers started picking up more explanation and context than we wanted.
So we tested the same 36 questions against the same repo and model. The later answers were consistently longer, even though Claude still had the instruction to stay concise.
The instruction only appeared once, at the start, while newer prompts kept pushing it further back in the session.
So we tried something different. We built a simple Claude Code plugin to keep the instruction present throughout the session, made it public, and included the install command at the end of this post.
Instead of making the rule stricter, we made it harder to forget
We load the full concise-output rule once at the start. After that, every new prompt gets a much shorter reminder.
The full rule explains how concise output should work and when Claude should ignore it. The reminder only brings back the essentials: answer directly, keep it short by default, and skip explanations that weren’t asked for.
So the setup looks roughly like this:
Session starts
↓
Full output rule
Prompt 1 + short reminder
Prompt 2 + short reminder
Prompt 3 + short reminder
...
We only needed to bring the important parts back before each prompt, without stuffing the context with the same long instruction again and again.
The rule still needed a bit of tuning.
Some answers should be longer. If a test fails or something breaks, Claude needs to explain what happened. The same goes for prompts sent to subagents, where being too brief can create more work later.
We also didn’t want to ban things like tables or extra detail when they were actually useful.
So the target was never “make every answer as short as possible.” It was simply to cut the parts we didn’t need.
Then we measured whether it actually worked
At first, we weren’t convinced. It felt shorter, which isn’t the same thing.
So we ran the same 36 questions three times with three different setups:
The rule alone already made a big difference. Adding the short reminder pushed it further, cutting median output by 73% compared with the control run.
The cost dropped too, from $7.47 to $4.07 for the exact same 36 questions. That’s 46% less!
But shorter answers only matter if they’re still useful. So we checked what Claude was actually removing. Most of it was extra explanation around the answer, which was a good sign.
We also noticed that Claude made fewer tool calls with the reminder. That could mean it was skipping unnecessary work, but it could also mean it wasn’t digging deep enough in some cases.
That’s something we’re still watching.
The useful part is the reminder pattern
Concise output is just one use for this pattern.
We’ve since started using the same approach for other things we want Claude to remember during longer sessions, like asking for clarification when something is unclear or checking whether a task is actually finished.
The setup stays the same. Put the full instruction into the session once, then repeat a short reminder when that behaviour matters.
If you want to try the concise-output version yourself, the plugin is public. Give it a try and let us know what you think.
claude plugin marketplace add josippapez/ai-setup
claude plugin install concise-output@ai-setup --scope user
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