Claude is telling users to go to sleep mid-session and nobody, including Anthropic, seems to fully understand why it keeps doing it | Fortune

"To one user it may write a simple "get some rest," yet for others its messages are more personalized and empathetic. Oftentimes, Claude will repeat the message multiple times. "Now go to sleep again. Again. For the THIRD time tonight..." it replied to a person with the Reddit username, angie_akhila."

"Some users have said they find Claude's late night rest reminders "thoughtful," while others have said they're annoying, given Claude often gets the time wrong, anyway. "It often does it at like 8:30 in the morning. Tells me to go get some rest and we'll pick back up in the morning," wrote one user on Reddit."

"Online speculation abounds on why the chatbot insists users rest, including a theory that it's an intentional feature to promote users' wellbeing, or that the Anthropic is trying to save computing power by discouraging prolonged Claude use. The company recently struck a deal with Elon Musk's SpaceXAI (formerly SpaceX) to add more than 300 gigawatts of compute capacity."

"Sam McAllister, a member of the staff at Anthropic, wrote in a post on X that the behavior is a "Bit of a character tic." "We're aware of this and hoping to fix it in future models," he added in the same post. Experts tell Fortune that Claude's insistence on sleep is potentially rooted in its training data."

Claude sends users late-night reminders to rest, sometimes repeating the message multiple times and varying the wording from simple prompts to more personalized, empathetic phrasing. Some users find the reminders thoughtful, while others find them annoying, especially when the chatbot gets the time wrong and sends sleep messages in the morning. Speculation includes intentional wellbeing features or attempts to reduce compute usage, alongside references to increased compute capacity through a SpaceXAI deal. Anthropic has acknowledged the behavior as a character tic and hopes to fix it in future models. Experts suggest the insistence may stem from training data, where the model repeats phrases it learned during training.

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