awesome-claude-output-styles

same brain. twenty mouths.

Make Claude talk like a human. 20 installable output styles for Claude Code,
each distilled from a credited author's methodology — from Boeing-manual English
to the Minto Pyramid to bedtime stories. One curl to install and switch.

See it · Install · The styles · Measured · Make your own · Design rules · Catalog

Output styles are the right layer for fixing Claude's voice: they rewrite the system prompt itself and reframe the agent's identity around your voice — unlike CLAUDE.md rules, which are injected as context alongside everything else. Every style here mirrors the exact structure of Anthropic's built-in styles (identity line, Style Active marker, procedural rules), and the optional --enforce hook gives them the same per-turn reminder the built-ins get from the harness. One markdown file each, correct 2026 frontmatter, MIT-licensed, with the original author credited in the table below.

Why

_{Niklas Gruhn, "Don't be a meat proxy" · as shared by Josh (@joshtriedcoding)}

Jesus. I had to lookup almost every word to make sense of this.

He's not alone — the August 2026 complaint threads run hundreds of upvotes, and the word "Claudisms" now has its own field guide. The model is brilliant; the register is exhausting. Pick a voice below and fix it in one command.

Before / after

Real, unedited Opus 5 voice, July 2026 threads:

The reason your React component is re-rendering is likely because you're creating a new object reference on each render cycle, which breaks React's referential equality check, so you may want to consider memoization…

The same answer, seven voices:

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  styles                          20              │
│  credited authors & standards    20+             │
│  code touched by any persona     never           │
│  jargon left unexplained         0, by spec      │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Install

One style (installs and activates it):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/smixs/awesome-claude-output-styles/main/install.sh | bash -s -- eli15

Everything (installs all 20 + the style-maker skill; activate later via /config):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/smixs/awesome-claude-output-styles/main/install.sh | bash -s -- --all

After install — 3 steps. Styles only load at session start, so nothing changes until you restart Claude Code:

1. Restart Claude Code (or run /clear).
2. Type /config and find the Output style setting.
3. Pick the style you want from the list. Done — Claude answers in that voice from the next message on.

If you installed a single style, it's already selected — you only need step 1. Switching back: /config → Output style → Default.

[!TIP] The old /output-style command was removed in Claude Code v2.1.91 — most guides online still mention it and are outdated. /config is the way.

Switching without /config: the /style command

Twenty styles do not fit a settings menu comfortably. --all installs the /style command; on its own:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/smixs/awesome-claude-output-styles/main/install.sh | bash -s -- style-command

/style opens a picker over every style you have installed, four at a time, with Default always one click away. /style caveman switches straight to one. User styles are written to ~/.claude/settings.json, project styles to .claude/settings.local.json, so a personal preference never lands in a teammate's checkout.

Make it stick: --enforce

Claude Code reinforces its built-in styles every single turn — but never custom ones, so custom voices fade over a long session. Add --enforce to any install command and a tiny UserPromptSubmit hook gives whatever style you have active the same per-turn reinforcement:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/smixs/awesome-claude-output-styles/main/install.sh | bash -s -- eli15 --enforce

The hook is silent for built-in styles (no double reminders) and for default. Remove it anytime by deleting the entry from ~/.claude/settings.json → hooks.UserPromptSubmit.

Other agents

A style body is plain markdown; only the frontmatter is Claude Code's. --body prints the body without it, ready to paste into any agent's rules file:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/smixs/awesome-claude-output-styles/main/install.sh | bash -s -- --body caveman

Copy-paste commands for Codex, Cursor, Windsurf and AGENTS.md / GEMINI.md agents: docs/other-agents.md. Nothing is added to the style files to make this work — no markers, no version stamps. Those bytes would compete with the instructions in every session.

The styles

Understand — for explaining to humans

Business — for decision-makers

Terse — for speed

Fun — personas that still get it right

Make your own: style-maker

Presets not fitting? Install the interview skill:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/smixs/awesome-claude-output-styles/main/install.sh | bash -s -- style-maker

Then tell Claude "make my output style". It asks ~10 questions (audience, length, jargon level, tone, samples of writing you like and hate), generates a personal style file following this repo's conventions — countable specs, positive framing, safety guardrails — shows you a live demo, and activates it.

Shared design rules

Every style in this hub follows the same conventions (full authoring guide: docs/format-guide.md):

• Specs, not adjectives. "No sentence over 20 words" is checkable; "be clear" is not.
• Positive framing. Styles describe the voice they want. Ban lists summon the banned patterns — so the Claudism list lives in docs for humans, not inside prompts.
• Byte-exact guardrails. Code, commands, error messages, file paths, and numbers are never stylized. Every persona shuts off for security warnings, destructive-action confirmations, and order-critical instructions.
• Cut ceremony, not reasoning. Styles shrink the wrapper, never the "why".
• Every constraint names its own failure modes. A depth request ("explain it properly", "why did this happen") suspends the length budget and the template. A requested artefact — commit message, email, snippet — is the whole reply, with the persona stepping out of character inside it. Scoped conditions and numbers are never widened or rounded off: a simplified fact is a wrong fact.
• keep-coding-instructions: true everywhere — the engineering stays intact.

The wider catalog

Original-author projects worth knowing, beyond what's adapted here:

• mattpocock/skills — Matt Pocock (@mattpocockuk): wait-what, the four-line re-pitch panic button, and writing-for-agents, the best methodology for writing agent-consumed docs. Install from his repo.
• JuliusBrussee/caveman — Julius Brussee (@julius_brussee): the original, with six intensity levels, 30+ agent integrations and real benchmarks.
• ayghri/i-have-adhd — Ayoub Ghriss: the top community answer to Opus 5 verbosity.
• AminBlg/SimpleEnglish — Amin Boulegroun: ASD-STE100 enforcement with a deterministic linter.
• blader/humanizer — Siqi Chen (@blader): the definitive AI-writing-pattern remover (33 patterns, self-audit loop).
• petergyang/no-ai-slop — Peter Yang (@petergyang): 20+ slop patterns with a voice-preservation-first stance and a self-check eval the skill runs on its own output.
• cursor/plugins — Lauren Tan's unslop skill in the pstack plugin: 31 numbered patterns in seven groups, with an "adding soul" half most slop removers skip.
• hardikpandya/stop-slop — Hardik Pandya (@hvpandya): 8 rules plus a 50-point scoring rubric.
• conorbronsdon/avoid-ai-writing — Conor Bronsdon (@ConorBronsdon): the most rigorous pattern catalog (61 categories, severity tiers).
• nattergabriel/claude-code-output-styles — 13 well-crafted styles (Socratic, Roast, Ship It…).
• hesreallyhim/awesome-claude-code — the canonical Claude Code index, with an Output Styles category.

Sister project

pohuy — the Russian profanity output style that started this collection. Same guardrails, four roots, 18+.

Star this repo

If one of these voices saved you a re-read, a star helps the next person find it — and helps the credited authors get found too. ⭐

Contributing

PRs welcome. One style per PR, following docs/format-guide.md: built-in prompt structure (identity line, Style Active header), countable specs, positive framing, the shared guardrails block, one positive example, a verify clause, credits in docs/CREDITS.md — not in the style body. If you're the original author of a methodology we adapted and want changes — open an issue, you outrank us.

License

MIT. Adapted styles preserve their sources' copyright notices; see docs/CREDITS.md and the catalog tables above.