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Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

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Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#171

Post by daxfohl »

sothatsit wrote: post #142
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.

True, though even then I kind of wonder what's the point. Once they build an AI that's as good as a human coder but 1000x faster, parallelization no longer buys you anything. Writing and deploying the code is no longer the bottleneck, so the extra coordination required for parallelism seems like extra cost and risk with no practical benefit.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#172

Post by Kerrick »

7777777phil wrote: post #166
Kerrick wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any chance you'll add Antigravity and Jetbrains Junie? I've been using almost nothing but those for the last month. Antigravity at home, Junie at work.

Done, upon popular demand I added Antigravity, Codex CLI, and Junie

Thanks!

> Q5. For which tasks do you use AI assistance most?

This is really tough for me. I haven't done a single one of those mostly-manually over the last month.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#173

Post by stavros »

mafriese wrote: post #169
stavros wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What OpenCode primitive did you use to implement this? I'd quite like a "senior" Opus agent that lays out a plan, a "junior" Sonnet that does the work, and a senior Opus reviewer to check that it agrees with the plan.

You can define the tools that agents are allowed to use in the opencode.json (also works for MCP tools I think). Here’s my config: https://pastebin.com/PkaYAfsn The models can call each other if you reference them using @username. This is the .md file for the manager : https://pastebin.com/vcf5sVfz I hope that helped!

This is excellent, thank you. I came up with half of this while waiting for this reply, but the extra pointers about mentioning with @ and the {file} syntax really helps, thanks again!

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#174

Post by juanre »

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…

I have been using a simpler version of this pattern, with a coordinator and several more or less specialized agents (eg, backend, frontend, db expert). It really works, but I think that the key is the coordinator. It decreases my cognitive load, and generally manages to keep track of what everyone is doing.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#175

Post by mtalantikite »

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…

Agreed, I'm constantly coming back to a Claude tmux pane just to see it's decided to do something completely ridiculous. Just the other day I was having it add some test coverage stats to CI runs and when I came back it was basically trying to reinvent Istanbul in a bash script because the nyc tool wasn't installed in CI. I had to interrupt it and say "uh, just install nyc?". I was "Absolutely right!".

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#176

Post by overfeed »

mafriese wrote: post #157
ggoo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this satire?

Nope it isn’t. I did it as a joke initially (I also had a version where every 2 stories there was a meeting and if a someone underperformed it would get fired). I think there are multiple reasons why it actually works so well: - I built a system where context (+ the current state + goal) is properly structured and coding agents only get the information they actually need and nothing more. You wouldn’t let your produc…

> [...]coding agents only get the information they actually need and nothing more

Extrapolating from this concept led me to a hot-take I haven't had time to blog about: Agentic AI will revive the popularity of microservices. Mostly due to the deleterious effect of context size on agent performance.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#177

Post by threecheese »

Did they release this already? With version 2.1.9 the behavior is vastly different, all of a sudden the main loop is orchestrating subagents in a way I’ve not seen before.

“FTSChunkManager agent is still running but making good progress, let’s wait a bit more for it to complete” (it’s implementing hybrid search) plus a bunch of stack traces and json output.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#178

Post by TeMPOraL »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #146
adastra22 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> If they gave people API keys then no-one buys their ludicrously priced API product

The main driver for those subscriptions is that their monthly cost with Opus 3.7 and up pays itself back in couple hours of basic CC use, relative to API prices.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#180

Post by blibble »

ionwake wrote: post #155
PradeetPatel wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be satire? I thought that's a pretty stranded Agentic workflows. My current workplace follows a similar workflow. We have a repository full of agent.md files for different roles and associated personas. E.g. For project managers, you might have a feature focused one, a delivery driven one, and one that aims to minimise scope/technology creep.

I mean no offence to anyone but whenever new tech progresses rapidly it usually catches most unaware, who tend to ridicule or feel the concepts are sourced from it.

yeah, nfts, metaverse, all great advances

same people pushing this crap

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