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Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

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Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#71

Post by ttul »

svara wrote: post #45

I'm a fan of AI coding tools but the trend of adding ever more autonomy to agents confuses me. The rate at which a person running these tools can review and comprehend the output properly is basically reached with just a single thread with a human in the loop. Which implies that this is not intended to be used in a setting where people will be reading the code. Does that... Actually work for anyone? My experience so…

Yes, this actually works. In 2026, software engineering is going to change a great deal as a result, and if you're not at least experimenting with this stuff to learn what it's capable of, that's a red flag for your career prospects.

I don't mean this in a disparaging way. But we're at a car-meets-horse-and-buggy moment and it's happening really quickly. We all need to at least try driving a car and maybe park the horse in the stable for a few hours.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#72

Post by gen220 »

czhu12 wrote: post #66

The problem I’ve been having is that when Claude generates copious amounts of code, it makes it way harder to review than small snippets one at a time. Some would argue there’s no point reviewing the code, just test the implementation and if it works, it works. I still am kind of nervous doing this in critical projects. Anyone just YOLO code for projects that’s not meant to be one time, but fully intend to have to be…

In my (admittedly conflict-of-interest, I work for graphite/cursor) opinion, asking CC to stack changes, and then having an automated reviewer agent help a lot with digesting and building conviction in otherwise-large changesets.

My "first pass" of review is usually me reading the PR stack in graphite. I might iterate on the stack a few times with CC before publishing it for review. I have agents generate much of my code, but this workflow has allowed me to retain ownership/understanding of the systems I'm shipping.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#73

Post by [deleted] »

czhu12 wrote: post #66

The problem I’ve been having is that when Claude generates copious amounts of code, it makes it way harder to review than small snippets one at a time. Some would argue there’s no point reviewing the code, just test the implementation and if it works, it works. I still am kind of nervous doing this in critical projects. Anyone just YOLO code for projects that’s not meant to be one time, but fully intend to have to be…

[deleted]

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#74

Post by dceddia »

stingraycharles wrote: post #50
joshribakoff wrote: post #42

This is just sub agents, built into Claude. You don’t need 300,000 line tmux abstractions written in go. You just tell Claude to do work in parallel with background sub agents. It helps to have a file for handing off the prompt, tracking progress, and reporting back. I also recommend constraining agents to their own worktrees. I am writing down the pattern here https://workforest.space while nearly everyone is buildi…

It’s even less of a feature, Claude Code already has subagents; this new feature just ensures Claude Code actually uses this for implementation. imho the plans of Claude Code are not detailed enough to pull this off; they’re trying to do it to preserve context, but the level of detail in the plans is not nearly enough for it to be reliable.

Interesting about the level of detail. I’ve noticed that myself but I haven’t done much to address it yet.

I can imagine some ideas (ask it for more detail, ask it to make a smaller plan and add detail to that) but I’m curious if you have any experience improving those plans.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#75

Post by birken »

I'd really like to see a regular poll on HN that keeps track of which AI coding agents are the most popular among this community, like the TIOBE Index for programming languages.

Hard to keep up with all the changes and it would be nice to see a high level view of what people are using and how that might be shifting over time.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#76

Post by AstroBen »

czhu12 wrote: post #66

The problem I’ve been having is that when Claude generates copious amounts of code, it makes it way harder to review than small snippets one at a time. Some would argue there’s no point reviewing the code, just test the implementation and if it works, it works. I still am kind of nervous doing this in critical projects. Anyone just YOLO code for projects that’s not meant to be one time, but fully intend to have to be…

I think we'll start to see the results of that late this year, but it's a little early yet. Plenty of people are diving headfirst into it

To me it feels like building your project on sand. Not a good idea unless it's a sandcastle

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#77

Post by nilamo »

svara wrote: post #45

I'm a fan of AI coding tools but the trend of adding ever more autonomy to agents confuses me. The rate at which a person running these tools can review and comprehend the output properly is basically reached with just a single thread with a human in the loop. Which implies that this is not intended to be used in a setting where people will be reading the code. Does that... Actually work for anyone? My experience so…

It works for me, in that I don't care about all the intermediate babble ai generates. What matters is the final changelist before hitting commit... going through that, editing it, fixing comments, etc. But holding it's hand while it deals with LSP issues of a logger not being visible sometimes, is just not something I see a reason to waste my time with.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#78

Post by vorticalbox »

AffableSpatula wrote: post #7
wild_pointer wrote: post #6

Listen team lead and the whole team, make this button red.

ha! The default system prompt appears to give the main agent appropriate guidance about only using swarm mode when appropriate (same as entering itself into plan mode). You can further prompt it in your own CLAUDE.md to be even more resistant to using the mode if the task at hand isn't significant enough to warrant it.

I like opencode for the fact I can switch between build and plan mode just by pressing tab.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#79

Post by vorticalbox »

nilamo wrote: post #77
svara wrote: post #45

I'm a fan of AI coding tools but the trend of adding ever more autonomy to agents confuses me. The rate at which a person running these tools can review and comprehend the output properly is basically reached with just a single thread with a human in the loop. Which implies that this is not intended to be used in a setting where people will be reading the code. Does that... Actually work for anyone? My experience so…

It works for me, in that I don't care about all the intermediate babble ai generates. What matters is the final changelist before hitting commit... going through that, editing it, fixing comments, etc. But holding it's hand while it deals with LSP issues of a logger not being visible sometimes, is just not something I see a reason to waste my time with.

After I have wrote a feature and I’m in the ironing out bug stage this is where I like the agents do a lot of the grunt work, I don’t want to write jsdocs, or fix this lint issue.

I have also started it in writing tests.

I will write the first test the “good path” it can copy this and tweak the inputs to trigger all the branches far faster than I can.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#80

Post by vunderba »

pton_xd wrote: post #68
svara wrote: post #45

I'm a fan of AI coding tools but the trend of adding ever more autonomy to agents confuses me. The rate at which a person running these tools can review and comprehend the output properly is basically reached with just a single thread with a human in the loop. Which implies that this is not intended to be used in a setting where people will be reading the code. Does that... Actually work for anyone? My experience so…

> The rate at which a person running these tools can review and comprehend the output properly is basically reached with just a single thread with a human in the loop. That's what you're missing -- the key point is, you don't review and comprehend the output! Instead, you run the program and then issue prompts like this (example from simonw): "fix in and get it to compile" [0]. And I'm not ragging on this at all, thi…

I've commented on this before, but issuing a prompt like "Fix X" makes so many assumptions (like a "behaviorism" approach to coding) including that the bug manifests in both an externally and consistently detectable way, and that you notice it in the first place. TDD can reduce this but not eliminate it.

I do a fair amount of agentic coding, but always periodically review the code even if it's just through the internal diff tool in my IDE.

Approximately 4 months ago Sonnet 4.5 wrote this buried deep in the code while setting up a state machine for a 2d sprite in a relatively simple game:

  // Pick exit direction (prefer current direction)
  const exitLeft = this.data.direction === Direction.LEFT || Math.random()
I might never have even noticed the logical error but for Claude Code attaching the above misleading comment. 99.99% of true "vibe coders" would NEVER have caught this.
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