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dewey 2 hours ago [-]
Building your AI agent "toolkit" is becoming the equivalent of the perfect "productivity" setup where you spend your time reading blog posts, watching YouTube videos telling you how to be productive and creating habits and rituals...only to be overtaken by a person with a simple paper list of tasks that they work through.
Plain Claude, ask it to write a plan, review plan, then tell it to execute still works the best in my experience.
thisrobot 46 seconds ago [-]
This resonates with me. Sometimes I build up some artifacts within the context of a task, but these almost always get thrown away. There are primarily three reason I prefer a vanilla setup.
1. I have many and sometimes contradictory workflows: exploration, prototyping, bug fixing debugging, feature work, pr management, etc. When I'm prototyping, I want reward hacking, I don't care about tests or lint's, and it's the exact opposite when I manage prs.
2. I see hard to explain and quantify problems with over configuration. The quality goes down, it loses track faster, it gets caught in loops. This is totally anecdotal, but I've seen it across a number of projects. My hypothesis is that is related to attention, specifically since these get added to the system prompt, they pull the distribution by constantly being attended to.
3. The models keep getting better. Similar to 2, sometime model gains are canceled out by previously necessary instructions. I hear the anthropic folks clear their claude.md every 30 days or so to alleviate this.
obsidianbases1 2 hours ago [-]
Lots of money being made by luring people into this trap.
The reality is that if you actually know what you want, and can communicate it well (where the productivity app can be helpful), then you can do a lot with AI.
My experience is that most people don't actually know what they want. Or they don't understand what goes into what they want. Asking for a plan is a shortcut to gaining that understanding.
pfortuny 2 hours ago [-]
Emacs init file bikeshedding comes to mind…
wilkystyle 2 hours ago [-]
but now you can build your AI agent toolkit to work on your init file for you
ctoth 55 minutes ago [-]
> Plain Claude, ask it to write a plan, review plan, then tell it to execute still works the best in my experience.
Working on an unspecified codebase of unknown size using unconfigured tooling with unstated goals found that less configuration worked better than more.
sockgrant 52 minutes ago [-]
if you work on platforms, frameworks, tools that are public knowledge, then yeah. If there’s nothing unique to your project or how to write code in it, build it, deploy it, operate it, yeah.
But for some projects there will be things Claude doesn’t know about, or things that you repeatedly want done a specific way and don’t want to type it in every prompt.
I’m seeing this more and more, where people build this artificial wall you supposedly need to climb to try agentic coding. That’s not the right way to start at all. You should start with a fresh .claude, empty AGENTS.md, zero skills and MCP and learn to operate the thing first.
bonoboTP 3 minutes ago [-]
2 months ago I built (with Claude) a quite advanced Python CLI script and Claude Skill that searches and filters the Claude logs to access information from other sessions or from the same session before context compaction. But today Claude Code has a builtin feature to search its logs and will readily do it when needed.
My point is, these custom things are often short lived band-aids, and may not be needed with better default harnesses or smarter future models.
gck1 3 hours ago [-]
I'd also go even further and say that you likely should never install ANY skill that you didn't create yourself (i mean, guided claude to create it for you works too), or "forked" an existing one and pulled only what you need.
Everyone's workflow is different and nobody knows which workflow is the right one. If you turn your harness into a junk drawer of random skills that get auto updated, you introduce yet another layer of nondeterminism into it, and also blow up your context window.
The only skill you should probably install instead of maintaining it yourself is playwright-cli, but that's pretty much it.
dance2die 2 hours ago [-]
> I'd also go even further and say that you likely should never install ANY skill that you didn't create yourself
Ignore original comment below, as the post is technical so is the parent comment: for techies
---
That applies to tech users only.
Non-tech users starting to use Claude code and won't care to get the job done
Claude introduced skills is to bring more non-tech users to CLI
as a good way to get your feet wet.
Not everyone will go for such minute tweaks.
JohnMakin 2 hours ago [-]
what? non techies are most at risk. There are a huge number of malicious skills. Not knowing or caring how to spot malicious behavior doesn’t mean someone shouldn’t be concerned about it, no matter how much they can’t or don’t want to do it.
I am an adminstrator of this stuff at my company and it’s an absolute effing nightmare devising policies that protect people from themselves. If I heard this come out of someone’s mouth underneath me I’d tell them to leave the room before I have a stroke.
And this is stuff like, if so and so’s machine is compromised, it could cost the company massive sums of money. for your personal use, fine, but hearing this cavalier attitude like it doesn’t matter is horrifying, because it absolutely does in a lot of contexts.
hombre_fatal 2 hours ago [-]
I had an issue with playwright MCP where only one Claude Code instance could be using it at a time, so I switched to Claude's built-in /chrome MCP.
In practice, I also find it more useful that the Chrome MCP uses my current profile since I might want Claude to look at some page I'm already logged in to.
I'm not very sophisticated here though. I mainly use use browser MCP to get around the fact that 30% of servers block agent traffic like Apple's documentation.
egeozcan 57 minutes ago [-]
I was using the built-in chrome skill but it was too unreliable for me. So I switched to playwright cli and I can also have it use firefox to get help debugging browser-specific issues.
s900mhz 2 hours ago [-]
Yes this is the path I’m taking. Experiment, build your own toolbox whether it’s hand rolled skills or particular skills you pull out from other public repos. Then maintain your own set.
You do not want to log in one day to find your favorite workflow has changed via updates.
Then again this is all personal preference as well.
nunez 3 hours ago [-]
This matters for big engineering teams who want to put _some_ kind of guardrails around Claude that they can scale out.
For example, I have a rule [^0] that instructs Claude to never start work until some pre-conditions are met. This works well, as it always seems to check these conditions before doing anything, every turn.
I can see security teams wanting to use this approach to feel more comfortable about devs doing things with agentic tools without worrying _as much_ about them wreaking havoc (or what they consider "havoc").
As well, as someone who's just _really_ getting started with agentic dev, spending time dumping how I work into rules helped Claude not do things I disapprove of, like not signing off commits with my GPG key.
That said, these rules will never be set in stone, at least not at first.
I'm also thinking on how we can put guardrails on Claude - but more around context changes. For example, if you go and change AGENTS.md, that affects every dev in the repo. How do we make sure that the change they made is actually beneficial? and thinking further, how do we check that it works on every tool/model used by devs in the repo? does the change stay stable over time?
dominotw 38 minutes ago [-]
NO EXCEPTIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
cute that you think cluade gives a rat ass about this.
Aurornis 4 hours ago [-]
This article isn't saying you must set up a big .claude folder before you start. It repeats several times that it's important to start small and keep it short.
It's also not targeted at first-timers getting their first taste of AI coding. It's a guide for how to use these tools to deal with frustrations you will inevitably encounter with AI coding.
Though really, many of the complaints about AI coding on HN are written by beginners who would also benefit from a simple .claude configuration that includes their preferences and some guidelines. A frequent complaint from people who do drive-by tests of AI coding tools before giving up is that the tools aren't reading their mind or the tools keep doing things the user doesn't want. Putting a couple lines into AGENTS.md or the .claude folder can fix many of those problems quickly.
jameshart 5 hours ago [-]
Yes, but as soon as you start checking in and sharing access to a project with other developers these things become shared.
Working out how to work on code on your own with agentic support is one thing. Working out how to work on it as a team where each developer is employing agentic tools is a whole different ballgame.
sceptic123 4 hours ago [-]
But why is it different? Why does it need to be? I don't write code the same as other devs so why would/should I use AI the same?
Is this a hangover from when the tools were not as good?
lucideer 4 hours ago [-]
I'd see this as being useful for two reasons:
1. Provision of optional tools: I may use an ai agent differently to all other devs on a team, but it seems useful for me to have access to the same set of project-specific commands, skills & MCP configs that my colleagues do. I amn't forced to use them but I can choose to on a case by case basis.
2. Guardrails: it seems sensible to define a small subset of things you want to dissuade everyone's agents from doing to your code. This is like the agentic extension of coding standards.
IanCal 4 hours ago [-]
> I don't write code the same as other devs
Most people do, most people don’t have wildly different setups do they? I’d bet there’s a lot in common between how you write code and how your coworkers do.
benoau 3 hours ago [-]
I bet there's a lot more consistency now that AI can factor in how things are being done and be guided on top of that too.
thierrydamiba 4 hours ago [-]
[dead]
georgeburdell 5 hours ago [-]
In my own group, agentic coding made sharing and collaboration go out the window because Claude will happily duplicate a bunch of code in a custom framework
mitchell_h 4 hours ago [-]
In my AGENTS.md I have two lines in almost every single one:
- Under no condition should you use emoji's.
- Before adding a new function, method or class. Scan the project code base, and attached frame works to verify that something else can not be modified to fit the needs.
himmi-01 4 hours ago [-]
I'm curious about the token usage when it scans across multiple repositories to finding similar methods. As our code grows so fast, is it sustainable ?
xmprt 3 hours ago [-]
I think the idea is that by creating these shared .claude files, you tell the agent how to develop for everyone and set shared standards for design patterns/architecture so that each user's agents aren't doing different things or duplicating effort.
abtinf 2 hours ago [-]
Seriously, just use plan mode first and you get like 90% of the way there, with CC launching subagents that will generally do the right thing anyway.
IMHO most of this “customize your config to be more productive” stuff will go away within a year, obsoleted by improved models and harnesses.
Just like how all the lessons for how to use LLMs in code from 1-2 years ago are already long forgotten.
JohnMakin 12 minutes ago [-]
I loved all the dumb prompt “hacks” back then like “try saying please”
pgwhalen 4 hours ago [-]
Who is building an artificial wall? Maybe I skimmed the post too fast, but it doesn't seem like this information is being presented as "you have to know/do this before you start agentic engineering", just "this is some stuff to know."
keeganpoppen 2 hours ago [-]
this is true, but i think people are best off starting with SOME project that gives users an idea of how to organize and think about stuff. for me, this is gastown, and i now have what has gotta be the most custom gastown install out there. could not agree more that your ai experience must be that which you build for yourself, not a productized version that portends to magically agentize your life. i think this is the real genius of gastown— not how it works, but that it does work and yegge built it from his own mind. so i’ve taken the same lesson and run very, very far with it, while also going in a totally different direction in many ways. but it is a work of genius, and i respect the hell out of him for putting it out there.
butlike 2 hours ago [-]
It's not as bucolic as this when trying to get an org on board. We're currently very open to using Claude, but the unknowns are still the unknowns, so the guardrails the `.claude` folder provides gives us comfort when gaining familiarity with the tool.
beyonddream 4 hours ago [-]
.claude has become the new dotfiles. And what do people do when they want to start using dotfiles ? they copy other’s dotfiles and same is happening here :)
freedomben 5 hours ago [-]
I totally agree with you that this not the right way to start. But, in my experience, the more you use the tool the more of a "feel" you get for it, and knowing how all these different pieces work and line up can be quite useful (though certainly not mandatory). It's been immensely frustrating to me how difficult it is to find all this info with all the low-quality junk that is out there on the internet.
embedding-shape 5 hours ago [-]
> all the low-quality junk that is out there on the internet.
Isn't this article just another one in that same drawer?
> What actually belongs in CLAUDE.md - Write: - Import conventions, naming patterns, error handling styles
Then just a few lines below:
> Don’t write: - Anything that belongs in a linter or formatter config
The article overall seems filled with internal inconsistencies, so I'm not sure this article is adding much beyond "This is what an LLM generated after I put the article title with some edits".
Fishkins 5 hours ago [-]
I agree with most of this, with one important exception: you should have some form of sandboxing in place before running any local AI agent. The easiest way to do that is with .claude/settings.json[0].
This is important no matter how experienced you are, but arguable the most important when you don't know what you're doing.
0: or if you don't want to learn about that, you can use Claude Code Web
post-it 4 hours ago [-]
The default sandboxing works fine for me. It asks before running any command, and I can whitelist directories for reading and non-compound commands.
The part about permissions with settings.json [0] is laughable. Are we really supposed to list all potential variations of harmful commands? In addition to the `Bash(cat ./.env)`, we would also need to add `Bash(cat .env)`, Bash(tail ./.env)`, Bash(tail .env)`, `Bash(head ./.env)`, `Bash(sed '' ./.env)`, and countless others... while at the same time we allow something like `npm` to run?
I know the deny list is only for automatically denying, and that non-explicitly allowed command will pause, waiting for user input confirmation. But still it reminds me of the rationale the author of the Pi harness [1] gave to explain why there will be no permission feature built-in in Pi (emphasis mine):
> If you look at the security measures in other coding agents, *they're mostly security theater*. As soon as your agent can write code and run code, it's pretty much game over. [...] If you're uncomfortable with full access, run pi inside a container or use a different tool if you need (faux) guardrails.
As you mentioned, this is a big feature of Claude Code Web (or Codex/Antigravity or whatever equivalent of other companies): they handle the sand-boxing.
Do people really run claude and other clis like this outside a container??
matheusmoreira 3 hours ago [-]
How did you contain Claude Code? Did you virtualize it? I just set up a simple firejail script for it. Not completely sure if it's enough but it's at least something.
arcanemachiner 3 hours ago [-]
The official Claude Code repo is configured use a devcontainer config:
You can download the devcontainer CLI and use it to start a Docker container with a working Claude Code install, simple firewall, etc. out of the box. (I believe this is how the VSCode extension works: It uses this repo to bootstrap the devcontainer).
Let's not fool ourselves here. If a security feature adds any amount of friction at all, and there's a simple way to disable it, users will choose to do so.
ymolodtsov 2 hours ago [-]
Peter Steinberger himself says he's just chatting with AI instead of coming up with crazy coding workflows.
dominotw 40 minutes ago [-]
> empty AGENTS.md, zero skills
which is basically every setup because claude sucks at calling skills and forget everything in claude.md with a few seconds.
stronglikedan 3 hours ago [-]
Seems maybe you're just not the target audience for this article.
hmokiguess 4 hours ago [-]
with Anthropic already starting to sell "Claude Certified Architect" exams and a "Partner Network Program", I think a lot of this stuff is around building a side industry on top of it unfortunately
heliumtera 5 hours ago [-]
Operate == me send https post and pray for the best
dietr1ch 5 hours ago [-]
That's the goal, keep spending tokens and claim you are super productive because of it
Synthetic7346 5 hours ago [-]
I wish all model providers would converge on a standard set of files, so I could switch easily from Claude to Codex to Cursor to Opencode depending on the situation
embedding-shape 5 hours ago [-]
Issue is that both harness and specific model matters a lot in what type of instruction works best, if you were to use Anthrophic's models together with the best way to do prompting with Codex and GPT models, you'd get a lot worse results compared to if you use GPT models with Codex, prompted in the way GPTs react best to them.
I don't think people realize exactly how important the specific prompts are, with the same prompt you'd get wildly different results for different models, and when you're iterating on a prompt (say for some processing), you'd do different changes depending on what model is being used.
freedomben 5 hours ago [-]
Having experimented with soft-linking AGENTS.md into CLAUDE.md and GEMINI.md, this lines up well with my experience. I now just let each time maintain it's own files and don't try to combine them. If it's something like my custom "## Agent Instructions" then I just copy-pasta and it's not been hard, and since that section is mostly identical I just treat AGENTS.md as the canonical and copy/paste any changes over to the others.
dbmikus 4 hours ago [-]
Are there any good guides on how to write prompt files tailored to different agents?
Would also be interested in examples of a CLAUDE.md file that works well in Claude, but works poorly with Codex.
flyingcircus3 18 minutes ago [-]
Why would you settle for a guide when you can get a claude skill to do it for you?
I think one of the main examples that i saw in a swyx article a while back is that using the sort of ALL CAPS and *IMPORTANT* language that works decently with claude will actually detune the codex models and make them perform worse. I will see if I can find the post
conception 1 hours ago [-]
You can just use a single agents.md and have claude.md use it. Then symlink or sync skills/etc between .folders. It’s not perfect but works.
0x500x79 3 hours ago [-]
Agree, for now im using dotagents by sentry to handle a lot of this.
heliumtera 5 hours ago [-]
And why would they ever let switch?
Synthetic7346 4 hours ago [-]
Interoperability means that people could switch to them as well
cloverich 3 hours ago [-]
Feel little like this is generated and not based on experience. Claude.md should be short. Typescript strict mode isnt a gotcha, itll figure that out on its own easily, imo omit things like that. People put far too much stuff in claude, just a few lines and links to docs is all it needs. You can also @Agents.md and put everything there instead. Dont skills supercede commands? Subagents are good esp if you specify model, forked memory, linked skills, etc. Always ask what you can optimize after you see claude thrashing, then figure out how to encode that (or refactor your scripts or code choices).
Always separate plan from implementation and clear context between, its the build up of context that makes it bad ime.
esses 45 minutes ago [-]
The intro paragraph sounds exactly like Claude’s phrasing. So much so that I couldn’t read the rest of the article because I assumed I could just ask Claude about the topic.
hombre_fatal 3 hours ago [-]
> Dont skills supercede commands?
Don't skills sit in context while custom slash commands are only manually invoked?
The difference isn't clear to me, especially since, upon googling it right now, I see that skills can also be invoked with a /slash.
wonnage 2 hours ago [-]
They’re the same thing now except that skills can have some frontmatter to allow the agent to execute them automatically.
dataviz1000 4 hours ago [-]
Claude Fast has very good alternate documentation for this. [0] I don't understand the hate for defining .claude/ . It is quite easy to have the main agent write the files. Then rather doing one shot coding, instead iterate quickly updating .claude/ I'm at the point where .claude/ makes copies of itself, performs the task, evaluates, and updates itself. I'm not coding code, I'm coding .claude/ which does everything else. This is also a mechanism for testing .claude, agents, and instructions which would be useful for sharing and reuse in an organization.
I've been going heavily in the direction of globally configured MCP servers and composite agents with copilot, and just making my own MCP servers in most cases.
Then all I have to do is let the agents actually figure out how to accomplish what I ask of them, with the highly scoped set of tools and sub agents I give them.
I find this works phenomenally, because all the .agent.md file is, is a description of what the tools available are. Nothing more complex, no LARP instructions. Just a straightforward 'here's what you've got'.
And with agents able to delegate to sub agents, the workflow is self-directing.
Working with a specific build system? Vibe code an MCP server for it.
Making a tool of my own? MCP server for dev testing and later use by agents.
On the flipside, I find it very questionable what value skills and reusable prompts give. I would compare it to an architect playing a recording of themselves from weeks ago when talking to their developers. The models encode a lot of knowledge, they just need orientation, not badgering, at this point.
gigapotential 3 hours ago [-]
Nice! Article didn't mention but ~/.claude/plans is where it stores plan md file when running in plan mode. I find it useful to open or backup plans from the directory.
pedropaulovc 50 minutes ago [-]
Shameless plug, if you ever need to parse ~/.claude/projects use claude-code-types [1].
are agents/ still relevant after we got skills? I am genuinely confused on why I would need custom system prompts for specific agents, what should I use them for?
giancarlostoro 4 hours ago [-]
The real wall I never see people talking about is, yes, you can tell Claude to update whatever file you want, but you have to be aware that if it's .claude/INSTRUCTIONS.md or CLAUDE.md that you need to tell Claude to re-read those files because it wrote the contents but its not treating it as if it were fresh instructions, it will run off whatever the last time it read that file was, so if it never existed, it will not know. I believe Claude puts those instructions in a very specific part of its context window.
saadn92 4 hours ago [-]
The claim that "whatever you write in CLAUDE.md, Claude will follow" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. In practice CLAUDE.md is a suggestion, not a contract. Complex tasks and compaction will dilute the use of CLAUDE.md, especially once the context window runs out.
dgb23 4 hours ago [-]
This is correct. All of these .md files are just blobs of text that the LLM matches against. They might increase the likelihood of something happening or not happening.
They look to me like people actually want to build deterministic workflows, but blobs of text are the wrong approach for that. The right tool is code that controls the agent through specific states and validates the tool calls step by step.
philbitt 1 hours ago [-]
[dead]
robertfw 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah, the moment I saw this I knew this article was not going to be very useful.
Getting claude to follow your guidance files consistently is a bit maddening.
arvindrajnaidu 1 hours ago [-]
Is this the best way to do things? If the idea is to simply compose a string to add to the input? Maybe it is.
mark_l_watson 2 hours ago [-]
Off topic but earlier today I asked Gemini to read this article and advise how to do the same things for OpenCode. I am fascinated with trying to get good performance from small local models.
manudaro 5 hours ago [-]
The .claude folder structure reminds me of how Terraform organizes state files. Smart move putting conversation history in Json rether than some propiertary format, makes it trivial to grep through old conversations or build custom analysis tools.
unshavedyak 5 hours ago [-]
Claude itself will grep through old conversations so it’s handy that Claude understands too
63stack 5 hours ago [-]
The article starts off really weak:
>Claude Code users typically treat the .claude folder like a black box. They know it exists. They’ve seen it appear in their project root. But they’ve never opened it, let alone understood what every file inside it does.
I know we are living in a post-engineering world now, but you can't tell me that people don't look at PRs anymore, or their own diffs, at least until/if they decide to .gitignore .claude.
sunir 5 hours ago [-]
You’re assuming most people using Claude code are senior engineers.
politelemon 5 hours ago [-]
And that we're living in a post engineering world.
fogzen 4 hours ago [-]
I don't. I have Claude do all my PR reviews, running in a daily loop in the morning. The truth is an LLM is better at code review than the average programmer.
I'm a senior engineer who has been shipping code since before GitHub and PR reviews was a thing. Thankfully LLMs have freed me from being asked to read other people's shit code for hours every day.
BuildItBusk 4 hours ago [-]
I think this does a great job of explaining the .claude directories in a beginner friendly way. And I don’t necessarily read it as “you have to do all this, before you start”.
It has a few issues with outdated advice (e.g. commands has been merged with skills), but overall I might use share it with co-workers who needs an introduction to the concept.
frizlab 4 hours ago [-]
Completely tangential, but can we please stop putting one million files at the root of the project which have nothing to do with the project? Can we land on a convention like, idk, a `.meta` folder (not the meta company, the actual word), or whatever, in which all of these Claude.md, .swift-version, Code-of-Conduct.md, Codeowners, Contributing.md, .rubocop.yml, .editorconfig, etc. files would go??
flurdy 4 hours ago [-]
I was glad when linux went with the .config standard for most dotfiles.
qiine 4 minutes ago [-]
Now if only it would be respected more often!
phyzix5761 5 hours ago [-]
Is there a completely free coding assistant agent that doesn't require you to give a credit card to use it?
I recently tried IntelliJ for Kotlin development and it wanted me to give a credit card for a 30 day trial. I just want something that scans my repo and I tell it the changes I want and it does it. If possible, it would also run the existing tests to make sure its changes don't break anything.
bityard 4 hours ago [-]
There are lots! Too many to cover in a single HN comment, and this space is evolving rapidly so I encourage you to look around.
While the coding assistants are pretty much universally free, you still need to connect them to a model. The model tokens generally cost something once you've gone past a certain quota.
I'm not sure if this is still true, but if you have a Google account, Gemini Code Assist had a quite generous "free tier" that I used for a while and found it do be pretty decent.
So that's what "software engineering" has become nowadays ? Some cargo cult basically. Seriously all of this gives red flag. No statements here are provable. It's just like langhchain that was praised and then everyone realized it's absolute dog water. Just like MCP too. The job in 2026 is really sad.
graypegg 5 hours ago [-]
I think I'm finding a pretty good niche for myself honestly. IMO, Software engineering is more so splitting into different professions based on the work is produces.
This sort of "prompt and pray" flow really works for people, as in they can make products and money, however, I do think the people that succeed today also would've reached for no-code tools 5 years ago and seen similar success. It's just faster and more comprehensive now. I think the general theme of the products remains the same though; not un-important or worthless, but it tends to be software that has effects that say INSIDE the realm of software. I feel like there's always been a market for that, as it IS important, it's just not WORTH the time and money to the right people to "engineer" those tools. A lot of SaaS products filled that niche for many years.
While it's not a way I want to work, I am also becoming comfortable with respecting that as a different profession for producing a certain brand of software that does have value, and that I wasn't making before. The intersection of that is opportunity I'm missing out on; no fault to anyone taking it!
The software engineer that writes the air traffic avoidance system for a plane better take their job seriously, understand every change they make, and be able to maintain software indefinitely. People might not care a ton about how their sales tracking software is engineered, but they really care about the engineering of the airplane software.
sarchertech 5 hours ago [-]
I think this is mostly right. The primary difference is that with no code you had to change platforms, but the Prompt and Pray method can be brought to bear on any software easily even the air traffic avoidance system.
It shouldn’t be, but it’s going to take some catastrophic events to convince people that we have to work to make sure we understand the systems we’re building and keep everything from devolving into vibe coded slop.
graypegg 4 hours ago [-]
> the Prompt and Pray method can be brought to bear on any software easily even the air traffic avoidance system.
I guess that's why I see it as a separate profession, as in we have to actually profess a standard for how a professional in our field acts and believes. I think it's OK for it to bifurcate into two different fields, but Software Engineering would need to specifically reject prompt-and-pray on a principled and rational basis.
Sadly yes, that might require real cost to life in order to find out the "why" side of that rational basis. If you meet anyone that went to an engineering school in Québec, ask them about the ceremony they did and the ring they received. [0] It's not like that ceremony fixes anything, but it's a solemn declaration of responsibility which to me at least, sets a contract with society that says "we won't make things that harm you".
> [The] history of the 1907 failure of the Quebec City bridge, which was the inspiration for the Calling of an Engineer ceremony.
baal80spam 5 hours ago [-]
> prompt and pray
This is a brilliant reimagining of the old and trusted PnP acronym.
sunir 5 hours ago [-]
When was it not a cargo cult?
forgotusername6 4 hours ago [-]
If these different agents could agree on a standard location that would be great. The specs are almost the same for .github and Claude but Claude won't even look at the .github location.
dmix 4 hours ago [-]
There already is, it's ~/.agents and you use symlinks for .claude, and the dir structure is pretty similar and anything you want to reuse across models is pretty standardized, just not formalized.
bagrow 6 hours ago [-]
Here's a question that I hope is not too off-topic.
Do people find the nano-banana cartoon infographics to be helpful, or distracting? Personally, I'm starting to tire seeing all the little cartoon people and the faux-hand-drawn images.
Wouldn't Tufte call this chartjunk?
push0ret 5 hours ago [-]
I haven't come around any AI generated imagery in documents / slides that adds any value. It's more the opposite, they stand out like a sore thumb and often even reduce usability since text cannot be copied. Oh and don't get me started on leadership adding random AI generated images to their emails just to show that they use AI.
linux2647 5 hours ago [-]
> Oh and don't get me started on leadership adding random AI generated images to their emails just to show that they use AI
Feels like generated AI art like this is modern clipart
GaggiX 5 hours ago [-]
It may be survivorship bias, you only notice the AI ones that are bad.
pona-a 2 hours ago [-]
The problems are not visual but epistemic. If the author didn't specify enough to produce a useful chart, then it's going to be the diagram equivalent of stock images thrown on a finished presentation by a lazy intern. You can't rejection-sample away this kind of systemic fault.
The simple truth we're about to realize is there is no free lunch: a tool cannot inject more intent into a piece than its author put in. It might smooth out some blemishes or highlight some alternative choices, but it can't transform the input "make me a video game" into something greater than a statistical mix-mash of the concept. And traditional tools of automation give you a much better, more precise interface for intent than natural language, which allows these vagaries.
spunker540 5 hours ago [-]
Yeah there are almost certainly times when it is gen ai and you just didn’t notice.
elcapitan 5 hours ago [-]
When I see AI images, I skip them, and most likely, the entire article. They're a better warning sign than the ones hidden in the text.
SV_BubbleTime 5 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I’ve been considering this. They’re going to start removing em dashes, which currently is a surefire way to detect AI text.
Let’s say lose those and using emojis as bullet points. It’s going to be a lot harder to detect.
slopinthebag 4 hours ago [-]
I don't actually look for em dashes or emojis as indicators, I can tell just from a few paragraphs if the pacing and flow is AI slop.
randusername 4 hours ago [-]
Tufte is evergreen. Zinsser is another.
> Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.
> Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly. Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Reexamine each sentence you put on paper. Is every word doing new work? Can any thought be expressed with more economy?
On Writing Well (Zinsser)
fny 5 hours ago [-]
This is equivalent to "do people find PowerPoint to be helpful or distracting." Sometimes yes, mostly no.
In this case, I'd say helpful because I didn't have to read the article at all to understand what was being communicated.
matsemann 4 hours ago [-]
I never trust them to actually be correct. Aka they're probably worse than useless.
freedomben 5 hours ago [-]
Most of the time I find them distracting, and sometimes a huge negative on the article. In this particular article though, they're well done and relevant, and I think they add quite a bit. It's a highly personal opinion kind of thing though for sure.
SV_BubbleTime 5 hours ago [-]
The first one is actually quite good.
Some of the others, I don’t feel like added value, but I agree that these are some of the best of a practice that I agreed does not add a ton of value typically
ramon156 6 hours ago [-]
LinkedIn loves these, even if they're broken.
But they had already lost me at all the links, and the fact there's not a red wire through the entire article.
The first thing my eyes skimmed was:
> CLAUDE.md: Claude’s instruction manual
> This is the most important file in the entire system. When you start a Claude Code session, the first thing it reads is CLAUDE.md. It loads it straight into the system prompt and keeps it in mind for the entire conversation.
No it's not. Claude does not read this until it is relevant. And if it does, it's not SOT. So no, it's argumentatively not the most important file.
frotaur 4 hours ago [-]
Are you certain? My understanding was that this is automatically injected in the context, and in my experience that's how it worked. I never see 'ReadFile(claude.md)', and yet claude is aware of some conventions I put in there.
hbarka 3 hours ago [-]
They’re mistaken. CLAUDE.md is always loaded into context, along with system prompts and memory files.
“CLAUDE.md files are loaded into the context window at the start of every session”
SV_BubbleTime 5 hours ago [-]
Maybe. But I kind of view LinkedIn as a social network for people who only by the grace of a couple better decisions are talking about real business and not multilevel marketing schemes… but otherwise use the same themes and terminologies.
Like mostly people who have confused luck and success, or business acumen for religion.
So I wouldn’t use LinkedIn as a positive data point of what’s hot.
browningstreet 5 hours ago [-]
I think it's fine. As someone who blogged a lot, the instant visual differentiation among articles offered by the art within is actually valuable.
eitally 5 hours ago [-]
I am a victim of AI-documentation-slop at work, and the result is that I've become far more "Tuftian" in my preferences than ever before. In the past, I was a fan of beautiful design and sometimes liked nice colors and ornaments. Now, though, I've a fan of sparse design and relevant data (not information -- lots of information is useless slop). I want content that's useful and actionable, and the majority of the documents many of my peers create using Claude, Gemini or ChatGPT are fluffy broadsheets of irrelevant filler, rarely containing insights and calls-to-action.
So yes, it's chartjunk.
btucker 5 hours ago [-]
It's not necessarily an AI-generated infographics issue, it's that these aren't good infographics. The graphic part is adding minimal value.
simonw 5 hours ago [-]
My eye has started skipping past them, even though they're often quite useful if you engage with them.
I think the problem is that they're uninformative slop often enough that I've subconsciously determined they aren't worth risking attention time on.
heliumtera 5 hours ago [-]
No. It adds nothing so nothing is preferred
jwilliams 5 hours ago [-]
> Simply put: whatever you write in CLAUDE.md, Claude will follow.
No.
CLAUDE.md is just prompt text. Compaction rewrites prompt text.
If it matters, enforce it in other ways.
5 hours ago [-]
hbarka 3 hours ago [-]
CLAUDE.md survives compaction.
jwilliams 3 hours ago [-]
It's meant to, yes.
taormina 5 hours ago [-]
Exactly!
adshotco 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
persedes 3 hours ago [-]
huh neat, somehow completely missed out on the rules/ + path filters as a way to extend CLAUDE.md
BoredPositron 5 hours ago [-]
Alchemy.
rdevilla 4 hours ago [-]
The fuck? What's next, configuring maven and pom.xml? At least XML is unambiguous, well specified, and doesn't randomly refuse to compile 2% of the time..
sergiotapia 4 hours ago [-]
In my experience fewer skills is significantly better.
When you have this performative folder of skills the AI wastes a bunch of tool calls, gets confused, doesn't get to the meat of the problem.
beware!
jonnycoder 2 hours ago [-]
Yea I went through my global claude skills and /context yesterday because claude was performing terribly. I deleted a bunch of stuff including memory and anecdotally got better results later on in the day.
Normal_gaussian 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah skills get loaded into context which in effect pollutes context.
5 hours ago [-]
submeta 4 hours ago [-]
Tangential: The image with the heading "Anatomy of the .claude/ folder" is nicely made, anyone knows what tool is used for it?
akalidz 4 hours ago [-]
interesting
galoisscobi 5 hours ago [-]
> Most people either write too much or too little. Here’s what works.
> Two folders, not one
Why post AI slop here?
rvz 5 hours ago [-]
"Thinking" is about to get even harder to do for most grifters with newsletters to sell.
Plain Claude, ask it to write a plan, review plan, then tell it to execute still works the best in my experience.
1. I have many and sometimes contradictory workflows: exploration, prototyping, bug fixing debugging, feature work, pr management, etc. When I'm prototyping, I want reward hacking, I don't care about tests or lint's, and it's the exact opposite when I manage prs.
2. I see hard to explain and quantify problems with over configuration. The quality goes down, it loses track faster, it gets caught in loops. This is totally anecdotal, but I've seen it across a number of projects. My hypothesis is that is related to attention, specifically since these get added to the system prompt, they pull the distribution by constantly being attended to.
3. The models keep getting better. Similar to 2, sometime model gains are canceled out by previously necessary instructions. I hear the anthropic folks clear their claude.md every 30 days or so to alleviate this.
The reality is that if you actually know what you want, and can communicate it well (where the productivity app can be helpful), then you can do a lot with AI.
My experience is that most people don't actually know what they want. Or they don't understand what goes into what they want. Asking for a plan is a shortcut to gaining that understanding.
Working on an unspecified codebase of unknown size using unconfigured tooling with unstated goals found that less configuration worked better than more.
But for some projects there will be things Claude doesn’t know about, or things that you repeatedly want done a specific way and don’t want to type it in every prompt.
My point is, these custom things are often short lived band-aids, and may not be needed with better default harnesses or smarter future models.
Everyone's workflow is different and nobody knows which workflow is the right one. If you turn your harness into a junk drawer of random skills that get auto updated, you introduce yet another layer of nondeterminism into it, and also blow up your context window.
The only skill you should probably install instead of maintaining it yourself is playwright-cli, but that's pretty much it.
Ignore original comment below, as the post is technical so is the parent comment: for techies
---
That applies to tech users only.
Non-tech users starting to use Claude code and won't care to get the job done
Claude introduced skills is to bring more non-tech users to CLI as a good way to get your feet wet.
Not everyone will go for such minute tweaks.
I am an adminstrator of this stuff at my company and it’s an absolute effing nightmare devising policies that protect people from themselves. If I heard this come out of someone’s mouth underneath me I’d tell them to leave the room before I have a stroke.
And this is stuff like, if so and so’s machine is compromised, it could cost the company massive sums of money. for your personal use, fine, but hearing this cavalier attitude like it doesn’t matter is horrifying, because it absolutely does in a lot of contexts.
In practice, I also find it more useful that the Chrome MCP uses my current profile since I might want Claude to look at some page I'm already logged in to.
I'm not very sophisticated here though. I mainly use use browser MCP to get around the fact that 30% of servers block agent traffic like Apple's documentation.
You do not want to log in one day to find your favorite workflow has changed via updates.
Then again this is all personal preference as well.
For example, I have a rule [^0] that instructs Claude to never start work until some pre-conditions are met. This works well, as it always seems to check these conditions before doing anything, every turn.
I can see security teams wanting to use this approach to feel more comfortable about devs doing things with agentic tools without worrying _as much_ about them wreaking havoc (or what they consider "havoc").
As well, as someone who's just _really_ getting started with agentic dev, spending time dumping how I work into rules helped Claude not do things I disapprove of, like not signing off commits with my GPG key.
That said, these rules will never be set in stone, at least not at first.
[^0]: https://github.com/carlosonunez/bash-dotfiles/blob/main/ai/c...
cute that you think cluade gives a rat ass about this.
It's also not targeted at first-timers getting their first taste of AI coding. It's a guide for how to use these tools to deal with frustrations you will inevitably encounter with AI coding.
Though really, many of the complaints about AI coding on HN are written by beginners who would also benefit from a simple .claude configuration that includes their preferences and some guidelines. A frequent complaint from people who do drive-by tests of AI coding tools before giving up is that the tools aren't reading their mind or the tools keep doing things the user doesn't want. Putting a couple lines into AGENTS.md or the .claude folder can fix many of those problems quickly.
Working out how to work on code on your own with agentic support is one thing. Working out how to work on it as a team where each developer is employing agentic tools is a whole different ballgame.
Is this a hangover from when the tools were not as good?
1. Provision of optional tools: I may use an ai agent differently to all other devs on a team, but it seems useful for me to have access to the same set of project-specific commands, skills & MCP configs that my colleagues do. I amn't forced to use them but I can choose to on a case by case basis.
2. Guardrails: it seems sensible to define a small subset of things you want to dissuade everyone's agents from doing to your code. This is like the agentic extension of coding standards.
Most people do, most people don’t have wildly different setups do they? I’d bet there’s a lot in common between how you write code and how your coworkers do.
IMHO most of this “customize your config to be more productive” stuff will go away within a year, obsoleted by improved models and harnesses.
Just like how all the lessons for how to use LLMs in code from 1-2 years ago are already long forgotten.
Isn't this article just another one in that same drawer?
> What actually belongs in CLAUDE.md - Write: - Import conventions, naming patterns, error handling styles
Then just a few lines below:
> Don’t write: - Anything that belongs in a linter or formatter config
The article overall seems filled with internal inconsistencies, so I'm not sure this article is adding much beyond "This is what an LLM generated after I put the article title with some edits".
This is important no matter how experienced you are, but arguable the most important when you don't know what you're doing.
0: or if you don't want to learn about that, you can use Claude Code Web
I know the deny list is only for automatically denying, and that non-explicitly allowed command will pause, waiting for user input confirmation. But still it reminds me of the rationale the author of the Pi harness [1] gave to explain why there will be no permission feature built-in in Pi (emphasis mine):
> If you look at the security measures in other coding agents, *they're mostly security theater*. As soon as your agent can write code and run code, it's pretty much game over. [...] If you're uncomfortable with full access, run pi inside a container or use a different tool if you need (faux) guardrails.
As you mentioned, this is a big feature of Claude Code Web (or Codex/Antigravity or whatever equivalent of other companies): they handle the sand-boxing.
[0] https://blog.dailydoseofds.com/i/191853914/settingsjson-perm...
[1] https://mariozechner.at/posts/2025-11-30-pi-coding-agent/#to...
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code
You can download the devcontainer CLI and use it to start a Docker container with a working Claude Code install, simple firewall, etc. out of the box. (I believe this is how the VSCode extension works: It uses this repo to bootstrap the devcontainer).
Basic instructions:
- Install the devcontainer CLI: `https://github.com/devcontainers/cli#install-script`
- Clone the Claude Code repo: `https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code`
- Navigate to the top-level repo directory and bring up the container: `devcontainer --workspace-folder . up`
- Start Claude in the container: `devcontainer exec --workspace-folder . bash -c "exec claude"`
P.S. It's all just Docker containers under the hood.
Better isolation than running it in a container.
which is basically every setup because claude sucks at calling skills and forget everything in claude.md with a few seconds.
I don't think people realize exactly how important the specific prompts are, with the same prompt you'd get wildly different results for different models, and when you're iterating on a prompt (say for some processing), you'd do different changes depending on what model is being used.
Would also be interested in examples of a CLAUDE.md file that works well in Claude, but works poorly with Codex.
https://github.com/nidhinjs/prompt-master
Always separate plan from implementation and clear context between, its the build up of context that makes it bad ime.
Don't skills sit in context while custom slash commands are only manually invoked?
The difference isn't clear to me, especially since, upon googling it right now, I see that skills can also be invoked with a /slash.
[0] https://claudefa.st/blog/guide/mechanics/claude-md-mastery
Then all I have to do is let the agents actually figure out how to accomplish what I ask of them, with the highly scoped set of tools and sub agents I give them.
I find this works phenomenally, because all the .agent.md file is, is a description of what the tools available are. Nothing more complex, no LARP instructions. Just a straightforward 'here's what you've got'.
And with agents able to delegate to sub agents, the workflow is self-directing.
Working with a specific build system? Vibe code an MCP server for it.
Making a tool of my own? MCP server for dev testing and later use by agents.
On the flipside, I find it very questionable what value skills and reusable prompts give. I would compare it to an architect playing a recording of themselves from weeks ago when talking to their developers. The models encode a lot of knowledge, they just need orientation, not badgering, at this point.
[1]: https://www.npmjs.com/package/claude-code-types
They look to me like people actually want to build deterministic workflows, but blobs of text are the wrong approach for that. The right tool is code that controls the agent through specific states and validates the tool calls step by step.
Getting claude to follow your guidance files consistently is a bit maddening.
>Claude Code users typically treat the .claude folder like a black box. They know it exists. They’ve seen it appear in their project root. But they’ve never opened it, let alone understood what every file inside it does.
I know we are living in a post-engineering world now, but you can't tell me that people don't look at PRs anymore, or their own diffs, at least until/if they decide to .gitignore .claude.
I'm a senior engineer who has been shipping code since before GitHub and PR reviews was a thing. Thankfully LLMs have freed me from being asked to read other people's shit code for hours every day.
It has a few issues with outdated advice (e.g. commands has been merged with skills), but overall I might use share it with co-workers who needs an introduction to the concept.
I recently tried IntelliJ for Kotlin development and it wanted me to give a credit card for a 30 day trial. I just want something that scans my repo and I tell it the changes I want and it does it. If possible, it would also run the existing tests to make sure its changes don't break anything.
While the coding assistants are pretty much universally free, you still need to connect them to a model. The model tokens generally cost something once you've gone past a certain quota.
I'm not sure if this is still true, but if you have a Google account, Gemini Code Assist had a quite generous "free tier" that I used for a while and found it do be pretty decent.
It is fun to use.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RLIlNWv1xo
You log in with your Goggle account.
Opencoder is bring your own model.
You get what you pay for so good luck.
This sort of "prompt and pray" flow really works for people, as in they can make products and money, however, I do think the people that succeed today also would've reached for no-code tools 5 years ago and seen similar success. It's just faster and more comprehensive now. I think the general theme of the products remains the same though; not un-important or worthless, but it tends to be software that has effects that say INSIDE the realm of software. I feel like there's always been a market for that, as it IS important, it's just not WORTH the time and money to the right people to "engineer" those tools. A lot of SaaS products filled that niche for many years.
While it's not a way I want to work, I am also becoming comfortable with respecting that as a different profession for producing a certain brand of software that does have value, and that I wasn't making before. The intersection of that is opportunity I'm missing out on; no fault to anyone taking it!
The software engineer that writes the air traffic avoidance system for a plane better take their job seriously, understand every change they make, and be able to maintain software indefinitely. People might not care a ton about how their sales tracking software is engineered, but they really care about the engineering of the airplane software.
It shouldn’t be, but it’s going to take some catastrophic events to convince people that we have to work to make sure we understand the systems we’re building and keep everything from devolving into vibe coded slop.
I guess that's why I see it as a separate profession, as in we have to actually profess a standard for how a professional in our field acts and believes. I think it's OK for it to bifurcate into two different fields, but Software Engineering would need to specifically reject prompt-and-pray on a principled and rational basis.
Sadly yes, that might require real cost to life in order to find out the "why" side of that rational basis. If you meet anyone that went to an engineering school in Québec, ask them about the ceremony they did and the ring they received. [0] It's not like that ceremony fixes anything, but it's a solemn declaration of responsibility which to me at least, sets a contract with society that says "we won't make things that harm you".
[0] https://ironring.ca/home-en/
This is a brilliant reimagining of the old and trusted PnP acronym.
Do people find the nano-banana cartoon infographics to be helpful, or distracting? Personally, I'm starting to tire seeing all the little cartoon people and the faux-hand-drawn images.
Wouldn't Tufte call this chartjunk?
Feels like generated AI art like this is modern clipart
The simple truth we're about to realize is there is no free lunch: a tool cannot inject more intent into a piece than its author put in. It might smooth out some blemishes or highlight some alternative choices, but it can't transform the input "make me a video game" into something greater than a statistical mix-mash of the concept. And traditional tools of automation give you a much better, more precise interface for intent than natural language, which allows these vagaries.
Let’s say lose those and using emojis as bullet points. It’s going to be a lot harder to detect.
> Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.
> Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly. Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Reexamine each sentence you put on paper. Is every word doing new work? Can any thought be expressed with more economy?
On Writing Well (Zinsser)
In this case, I'd say helpful because I didn't have to read the article at all to understand what was being communicated.
Some of the others, I don’t feel like added value, but I agree that these are some of the best of a practice that I agreed does not add a ton of value typically
But they had already lost me at all the links, and the fact there's not a red wire through the entire article.
The first thing my eyes skimmed was:
> CLAUDE.md: Claude’s instruction manual
> This is the most important file in the entire system. When you start a Claude Code session, the first thing it reads is CLAUDE.md. It loads it straight into the system prompt and keeps it in mind for the entire conversation.
No it's not. Claude does not read this until it is relevant. And if it does, it's not SOT. So no, it's argumentatively not the most important file.
https://code.claude.com/docs/en/memory
“CLAUDE.md files are loaded into the context window at the start of every session”
Like mostly people who have confused luck and success, or business acumen for religion.
So I wouldn’t use LinkedIn as a positive data point of what’s hot.
So yes, it's chartjunk.
I think the problem is that they're uninformative slop often enough that I've subconsciously determined they aren't worth risking attention time on.
No.
CLAUDE.md is just prompt text. Compaction rewrites prompt text.
If it matters, enforce it in other ways.
When you have this performative folder of skills the AI wastes a bunch of tool calls, gets confused, doesn't get to the meat of the problem.
beware!
> Two folders, not one
Why post AI slop here?