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Turning Claude Code into my best design partner

betweentheprompts.com

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Re: Turning Claude Code into my best design partner

#2

Post by ticoombs »

I used to joke about prompt engineering. But by jiminy it is a thing now. I swear sometimes I waste a good 10-20minutes writing up a good prompt and initial plan just so that claudecode can systematically implement something.

My usage is nearly the same as OP. Plan plan plan save as a file and then new context and let it rip.

That's the one thing I'd love, a good cli (currently using charm and cc) which allows me to have an implementation model, a plan model and (possibly) a model per sub agent. Mainly so I can save money by using local models for implementation and online for plans or generation or even swapping back. Charm has been the closest I've used so far allowing me to swap back and forth and not lose context. But the parallel sub-agent feature is probably one of the best things claudecode has.

(Yes I'm aware of CCR, but could never get it to use more than the default model so :shrug:)

Re: Turning Claude Code into my best design partner

#3

Post by Crowberry »

I’ve recently tried out Claude Code for a bit, I’ll make sure to give the suggested approach a go! It sounds like a nice workflow.

But I’m negatively surprised with the amount of money CC costs. Just a simple refactoring cost me about 5min + 15min review and 4usd, had I done it myself it might have taken 15-20min as well.

How much money do you typically spend on features using CC? Nobody seems to mention this

Re: Turning Claude Code into my best design partner

#4

Post by scastiel »

ticoombs wrote: post #2

I used to joke about prompt engineering. But by jiminy it is a thing now. I swear sometimes I waste a good 10-20minutes writing up a good prompt and initial plan just so that claudecode can systematically implement something. My usage is nearly the same as OP. Plan plan plan save as a file and then new context and let it rip. That's the one thing I'd love, a good cli (currently using charm and cc) which allows me to…

I agree, prompt engineering really is the foundation of working with AI (whether it’s for coding or anything else).

Re: Turning Claude Code into my best design partner

#5

Post by scastiel »

Crowberry wrote: post #3

I’ve recently tried out Claude Code for a bit, I’ll make sure to give the suggested approach a go! It sounds like a nice workflow. But I’m negatively surprised with the amount of money CC costs. Just a simple refactoring cost me about 5min + 15min review and 4usd, had I done it myself it might have taken 15-20min as well. How much money do you typically spend on features using CC? Nobody seems to mention this

Indeed, switching partially from Cursor to Claude Code increased the bill by a lot! Fortunately I use Claude Code mostly at work and I had no trouble to convince my boss to pay for it. But I’m still not sure how I’ll continue building side projects with Claude Code. Not sure I want to spend $20 each time I want to bootstrap an app in an evening just for fun…

Re: Turning Claude Code into my best design partner

#6

Post by hetspookjee »

Over the last 2 weeks (evenings only) I've spend a lot of time crafting the "perfect prompt" for claude code to one shot the project. I ended up with a rather small CLAUDE.md file that references 8 other MD files, ranging from project_architecture, models_spec, build_sequence, test_hierarchy, test_scenarios, and some other files.

It is a project for model based governance of Databricks Unity Catalog, with which I do have quite a bit of experience, but none of the tooling feels flexible enough.

Eventually I ended up with 3 different subagents that supported in the development of the actual planning files; a Databricks expert, a Pydantic expert, and a prompt expert.

The improvement on the markdown files was rather significant with the aid of these. Ranging from old pydantic versions and inconsistencies, to me having some misconceptions about unity catalog as well.

Yesterday eve I gave it a run and it ran for about 2 hours with me only approving some tool usage, and after that most of the tools + tests were done.

This approach is so different than I how used to do it, but I really do see a future in detailed technical writing and ensuring we're all on the same page. In a way I found it more productive than going into the code itself. A downside I found is that with code reading and working on it I really zone in. With a bunch of markdown docs I find it harder to stay focused.

Curious times!

Re: Turning Claude Code into my best design partner

#8

Post by naiv »

Crowberry wrote: post #3

I’ve recently tried out Claude Code for a bit, I’ll make sure to give the suggested approach a go! It sounds like a nice workflow. But I’m negatively surprised with the amount of money CC costs. Just a simple refactoring cost me about 5min + 15min review and 4usd, had I done it myself it might have taken 15-20min as well. How much money do you typically spend on features using CC? Nobody seems to mention this

You can sign up for a subscription and pay from $20-$200 flat with some daily/weekly restrictions on token usage.

https://support.anthropic.com/en/articles/11145838-using-cla...

Re: Turning Claude Code into my best design partner

#9

Post by k9294 »

scastiel wrote: post #5
Crowberry wrote: post #3

I’ve recently tried out Claude Code for a bit, I’ll make sure to give the suggested approach a go! It sounds like a nice workflow. But I’m negatively surprised with the amount of money CC costs. Just a simple refactoring cost me about 5min + 15min review and 4usd, had I done it myself it might have taken 15-20min as well. How much money do you typically spend on features using CC? Nobody seems to mention this

Indeed, switching partially from Cursor to Claude Code increased the bill by a lot! Fortunately I use Claude Code mostly at work and I had no trouble to convince my boss to pay for it. But I’m still not sure how I’ll continue building side projects with Claude Code. Not sure I want to spend $20 each time I want to bootstrap an app in an evening just for fun…

Why not to subscribe to pro or max? I calculated my CC usage this month (I'm on a Max 200$ plan), it’s close to 2.5k$... Its just crazy to use API at price right now.
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