the most recent fail involved YAML anchors (the ampersand syntax). i had a vague idea that you might be able to extend an anchor elsewhere in the file (like "abc " + &anchor). claude dreamed up three ways to do it, all three were hallucinated nonsense. when i said they didn't work, i get the classic "YAML doesn't support string concatenation in the way I suggested. My previous examples were incorrect."

any time i've saved via claude or chatgpt is dwarfed by the time they have wasted.