I have this same frustration. The way I use Claude is for it to make edits one small chunk at a time so I can review the code as it writes, and to make sure it's going on the right direction. I find this much easier than generating a large pr I need to review.

More and more I feel like I'm fighting Claude: it edits multiple files using python scripts and it edits in parallel so if I stop it, I have to stop each individual edit. Both of which I've told it not to do repeatedly, but it still does then apologies which is worse.

This is solvable. Opus has adhd. Myself and others solved this by building ticketing and task management systems. The task constrains the agents actions and focuses the effort. Every update is catalogued. It’s easily reviewed and referenced. Opus doing terrible things and apologizing is not surprising. I’ve moved to a system of multiple agents reviewing and authoring changes. Convergence generally always results in a positive commit.