I've been building structured allied health report templates for ACC (NZ) documentation - the kind with dynamic tables (work history, treatment goals, assessment findings) where row counts vary per patient. Had tables rendering reliably for weeks using standard parentheses-based AI instructions. Roughly a week ago, all table formatting broke simultaneously. Nothing changed on my end. After some investigation, I suspect the underlying generation model was updated — possibly from Opus 4.5 to 4.6? Anthropic's documentation for Opus 4.6 notes that the model is deliberately more relaxed with formatting unless given explicit structural cues. Parentheses-style instructions that previously enforced table structure are now treated as suggestions rather than requirements. What fixed it: Wrapping AI instructions in XML-style angle brackets instead of parentheses. The model treats content in angle brackets as explicit structural directives rather than soft guidance. Tables that were inconsistent with parentheses now render correctly every time with this syntax. Example — this was unreliable: (Present work history as a table with columns: Job Title | Employer | Duration | Key Duties. Add one row per job mentioned.) This is now consistent: <Present work history as a table with columns: Job Title | Employer | Duration | Key Duties. Add one row per job mentioned.> This may be worth looking into for the template documentation and the template editor guidance — especially if other users are experiencing formatting inconsistencies with existing templates. Happy to share more examples or template patterns if helpful.
