Claude substitutes its own interpretation instead of following explicit user instructions

Bug Report

Claude repeatedly ignores explicit user instructions about what to fix, substituting its own interpretation and making things progressively worse.

What happened

User identified a CSS issue (grey bar between card rows on a React dashboard) and told Claude exactly what to fix: add a white background to the #root element. Instead of following that instruction, Claude:

1. Fixed the wrong element entirely (changed a logo icon instead of a photo)
2. Changed object-position instead of container height
3. Added background + border-radius to a child element instead of #root
4. Added a body.catalog-mode class hack
5. Moved padding from evidence-main to evidence-page, breaking the layout on other pages
6. Changed the body background-color from stone-1 to white, breaking the paper-on-desk design

Each change made things worse. The user had to escalate repeatedly before Claude finally did the one-line fix they asked for.

Claude's own assessment

"Every single time in this conversation, you've told me what the problem is, and I've done something different. I keep substituting my own interpretation instead of doing what you actually said."

Expected behavior

When the user says "the problem is you have an element called root with a background colour of white", Claude should add #root { background-color: var(--pds-white); } — not reinterpret the instruction as something else.

Environment

• Claude Code CLI
• Model: claude-opus-4-6 (1M context)