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Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

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Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#141

Post by gedy »

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…

> running these tools can review and comprehend the output properly

You have to realize this is targeting manager and team lead types who already mostly ignore the details and quality frankly. "Just get it done" basically.

That's fine for some companies looking for market fit or whatever - and a disaster for some other companies now or in future, just like outsourcing and subcontracting can be.

My personal take is: speed of development usually doesn't make that big a difference for real companies. Hurry up and wait, etc.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#142

Post by sothatsit »

daxfohl wrote: post #124

I want it to generate better code but less of it, and be more proactive about getting human feedback before it starts going off the rails. This sounds like an inexorable push in the opposite direction. I can see this approach being useful once the foundation is more robust, has better common sense, knows when to push back when requirements conflict or are underspecified. But with current models I can only see this ap…

They haven’t released this feature, so maybe they know the models aren’t good enough yet.

I also think it’s interesting to see Anthropic continue to experiment at the edge of what models are capable of, and having it in the harness will probably let them fine-tune for it. It may not work today, but it might work at the end of 2026.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#143

Post by nikcub »

birken wrote: post #75

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.

I have an agent skill that is currently in the top 10 or so of the skills.sh directory - in terms of that audience, it's about 80% claude code.

Also 75% darwin-arm64

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#144

Post by MrOrelliOReilly »

Androider wrote: post #43

Looks like agent orchestrators provided by the foundation model providers will become a big theme in 2026. By wrapping it in terms that are already used in software development today like team leads, team members, etc. rather than inventing a completely new taxonomy of Polecats and Badgers, will help make it more successful and understandable.

Totally agreed. Most the weird concepts of Gas Town are just workarounds for bad behavior in Claude or the underlying models. Anthropic is in the best position to get their own model to adhere to orchestration steps, obviating the need for these extra layers. Beyond that, there shouldn’t actually be much to orchestration beyond a solid messaging and task management implementation.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#145

Post by ggoo »

mafriese wrote: post #138

Ok it might sound crazy but I actually got the best quality of code (completely ignoring that the cost is likely 10x more) by having a full “project team” using opencode with multiple sub agents which are all managed by a single Opus instance. I gave them the task to port a legacy Java server to C# .NET 10. 9 agents, 7-stage Kanban with isolated Git Worktrees. Manager (Claude Opus 4.5): Global event loop that wakes u…

Is this satire?

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#146

Post by skippyboxedhero »

adastra22 wrote: post #133
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't sub agents. The gap with existing tooling is that the abstraction is over a task rather than a conversation (due to the issue with third-party apps, Claude Code has been inherently limited to conversations which is why they have been lacking in this area, Claude Code Web was the first move in this direction), and the AI is actually coordinating the work (as opposed to being constantly prompted by the user).…

> Claude Code has been inherently limited to conversations How so? I’ve been using “claude -p” for a while now. But even within an interactive session, an agent call out is non-interactive. It operates entirely autonomously, and then reports back the end result to the top level agent.

Because of OAuth. If they gave people API keys then no-one buys their ludicrously priced API product (I assume their strategy is to subsidise their consumer product with the business product).

You can use Claude Code SDK but it requires a token from Claude Code. If you use this token anywhere else, your account gets shut down.

Claude -p still hits Claude Code with all the tools, all the Claude Code wrapping.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#147

Post by hereme888 »

ggoo wrote: post #145
mafriese wrote: post #138

Ok it might sound crazy but I actually got the best quality of code (completely ignoring that the cost is likely 10x more) by having a full “project team” using opencode with multiple sub agents which are all managed by a single Opus instance. I gave them the task to port a legacy Java server to C# .NET 10. 9 agents, 7-stage Kanban with isolated Git Worktrees. Manager (Claude Opus 4.5): Global event loop that wakes u…

Is this satire?

why would it be? It's a creative setup.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#148

Post by g947o »

fragmede wrote: post #84
birken wrote: post #75

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.

Question is, are people on HN procrastinating and commenting here because the agent isn't very good and they're avoiding having to write the code themselves, or is the agent so good that it's off writing code, and the people here are commenting out of boredom?

People have been procrastinating on HN since the beginning of time, before coding agents existed.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#150

Post by chasing »

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…

Yeah, it's not just my job to generate the code: It's my job to know the code. I can't let code out into the wild that I'm not 100% willing to vouch for.
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