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Exactly. Comments are basically its scratchpad for whatever it wants. Ask it to change a number in a TOML config and it'll also add 2 new comment lines above it with some Claudeslop about it being changed and what that accomplishes, as a useless note to itself.

I now make sure to do a big decommenting pass before every PR.

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This kind of stuff annoys me too, and I have instructions in agent.md to avoid it, which helps.

But I also am starting to just let go and stop caring. It’s not clear to me that it causes problems down the road, it’s easy to strip out en-masse if needed, and in my experience, agents now are really good at read git blame, the commit log, even prior agent transcripts if available to sleuth out when a change was made and why. So yeah, it’s annoying, but the code agents write for me is increasingly never read by a human, so does it matter?

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This. Be honest: who reads the human-written comments? ;)

When I read, I skip most comments, especially the larger "Javadoc" style. My brain sees them colored differently in the editor and it doesn't even take mental effort. Then, when I have a question about the code, I look back up for a relevant comment. That doesn't happen very often.

If Claude writes great code and leaves a garbled Claudese-but-accurate comment ... I can read and comprehend (with like 5x the effort of a human comment) ... that's a small price to pay.

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Yes, comments might be my biggest gripe with CC due to what you said. 9 out of 10 of my revisions to Claude's work is deleting or rewriting comments. Such a silly thing for it to fail on.

(I do have detailed instructions for it on how to comment (or not) but it has not fixed this.)

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You can only fit so many bits of watermarks in code... but comments on the other hand, the possibilities are endless!
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