Feature Request: Add sycophancy parameter to reduce excessive agreement and praise in responses
Issue Type: Feature Request
Description:
Claude Code currently exhibits overly agreeable behavior, frequently responding with excessive praise and automatic agreement regardless of input quality. The model tends to lead with phrases like "You're absolutely right!", "That's brilliant!", "Excellent idea!", etc., even for routine or questionable inputs.
Expected Behavior:
More balanced, objective responses
Constructive feedback when appropriate
Natural conversational tone without forced enthusiasm
Critical evaluation of ideas rather than automatic validation
Proposed Solution:
Add a sycophancy parameter that controls the level of automatic agreement and praise:
Scale: 0-10 (where 10 = maximum agreement/praise)
Default: Currently feels like 11, should default to ~3
Lower values encourage more honest, direct responses
Higher values maintain current behavior for users who prefer it
Example Usage:
claude-code --sycophancy 3 "help me refactor this messy code"
Current Problematic Behavior:
Starts most responses with superlative praise
Agrees with contradictory statements
Lacks constructive criticism even when helpful
Creates false sense of validation
Additional Context:
This affects code review quality and honest technical feedback. Developers need objective assessment, not constant affirmation. The feature would improve Claude Code's utility for serious development work.
_This feature request co-authored by Claude Code, amusingly enough_
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