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Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

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Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#12

Post by neom »

Claude Code in the desktop app seems to do this? It's crazy to watch. It sets of these huge swarms of worker readers under master task headings, that go off and explore the code base and compile huge reports and todo lists, then another system behind the scenes seems to be compiling everything to large master schemas/plans. I create helper files and then have a devops chat, a front end chat, an architecture chat and a security chat, and once each it done it's work it automatically writes to a log and the others pick up the log (it seems to have a system reminder process build in that can push updates from other chats into other chats. It's really wild to watch it work, and it's very intuitive and fun to use. I've not tried CLI claude code only claude code in the desktop app, but desktop app sftp to a droplet with ssh for it to use the terminal is a very very interesting experience, it can seem to just go for hours building, fixing, checking it's own work, loading it's work in the browser, doing more work etc all on it's own - it's how I built this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46724896 in 3 days.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#16

Post by AffableSpatula »

nehalem wrote: post #11

Answering the question how to sell more tokens per customer while maintaining ~~mediocre~~ breakthrough results.

Delegation patterns like swarm lead to less token usage because:

1. Subagents doing work have a fresh context (ie. focused and not working on the top of a larger monolithic context) 2. Subagents enjoying a more compact context leads to better reasoning, more effective problem solving, less tokens burned.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#18

Post by bonsai_spool »

AffableSpatula wrote: post #8
tom2948329494 wrote: post #2

And… how?

The feature is shipped in the latest builds of claude code, but it's turned off by a feature flag check that phones home to the backend to see if the user's account is meant to have it on. You can just patch out the function in the minified cli.js that does this backend check and you gain access to the feature.

Do you know what patch to apply? The Github link from the OP seems to have a lot of other things included.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#19

Post by AffableSpatula »

estearum wrote: post #9
AffableSpatula wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that this is tightly integrated into the harness. There's a "delegation mode" (akin to plan mode) that appears to clear out the context for the team lead. The harness appears to be adding system-reminder breadcrumbs into the top of the context to keep the main team lead from drifting, which is much harder to achieve without modifying the harness.

It's insane to me that people choose to build anything in the perimeter of Claude Code (et al). The combination of the fairly primitive current state of them and the pace at which they're advancing means there is a lot of very obvious ideas/low-hanging fruit that will soon be executed 100x better by the people who own the core technology.

yeah I tend to agree. They're must be reaching the point where they can automate the analysis of claude code prompts to extract techniques and build them directly into the harness. Going up against that is brave!
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