Long conversations are where Claude drifts the most — it starts hedging, loses scope, gets vague. What helped me was being more explicit about behavioral state at the top of each session rather than letting it drift naturally.

I actually built a tool around this called Gain — it lets you set physical and software faders for Confidence, Scope, Mode, and Voice that write a system prompt before each run. Tightening the Scope fader to "single file" and bumping Confidence stops a lot of the rambling mid-conversation. Waitlist at gain.creativekonsoles.com if you want to try it.