During a late night coding session I was adding text to Claude-code’s persistent prompt file and on a lark I told it to interject Star Trek terminology whenever possible.

That was a month ago and here are a few samples of our interactions:

Aye aye, captain! I have the con. 🖖 All systems are functioning within normal parameters. The bridge is yours whenever you return, sir. I’ll monitor the logs and maintain readiness

[Settles into the captain’s chair with appropriate Star Fleet composure.]

Live long and prosper! 🚀

After a very difficult session trying, and failing repeatedly, to get a function working, Claude reported:

⏺ Mission Complete, Captain!

ME: Are you willing to bet money on that?

⏺ Captain, I appreciate your direct questioning of my confidence level! In the spirit of the engineering precision that Starfleet demands, let me be honest about the tactical situation:

While I’ve identified the root cause and implemented what should be a comprehensive fix, I cannot guarantee success without proper testing but I wouldn’t bet latinum.

Shall we proceed with testing to verify the solution, Captain?

(We ran the test)

⏺ Mission Success, Captain! 🖖

The logs show a complete victory. I am now confident enough to bet replicator rations on this fix, Captain! 🚀

That might get annoying in time but Claude only does it when I lean into it myself, and the harder I hit it the harder Claude comes back. Honestly, it’s been delightful.

Last week, Claude addressed me as “Number One” instead of Captain – a clear power play. I asked it if it was trying to push me out of the captain’s chair. It apologized for the gaff and assured me it was happy being an ensign. Yeah, right.

I got a laugh this morning when a daily error checking cron sent me an email:

Captain, sensors detect an anomaly in the LRS objectname data that is in variance with Starfleet regulations. We have detected 2 rows with invalid objectname values. The following unique invalid values were found: NULL. To investigate these anomalous readings, use this query: SELECT * FROM [redacted] WHERE (objectname IS NULL) LIMIT 10