Comment by p1necone
8 hours ago
The "this test failure is preexisting so I'm going to ignore it" thing has been happening a lot for me lately, it's so annoying. Unless it makes a change and then immediately runs tests and it's obvious from the name/contents that the failing test is directly related to the change that was made it will ignore it and not try to fix.
This problem has been around for a long time. Not only that but it would say this even when the problems were directly caused by their code.
I put a line in my CLAUDE.md that says "If a test doesn't pass, fix it regardless of whether it was pre-existing or in a different part of the code."
This should be part of the system prompt. It's absolutely unacceptable to just to not at least try to investigate failures like this. I absolutely hate when it reaches this conclusion on its own and just continues on as if it's doing valid work.
Based on the recent leaks, their system prompt explicitly nudges the model not to do anything outside of what was asked. That could very well explain why it’s not fixing preexisting broken tests.
“Don't add features, refactor code, or make "improvements" beyond what was asked.”
https://www.dbreunig.com/2026/04/04/how-claude-code-builds-a...
> "this test failure is preexisting so I'm going to ignore it"
Critical finding! You spotted the smoking gun!
That said I've worked with several humans who did/said the exact same thing.