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Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

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Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#261

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 it just multiple opencode instances inside tmux panels or how do you run your setup?

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#262

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…

Very cool! A couple of questions: 1. Are you using a Claude Code subscription? Or are you using the Claude API? I'm a bit scared to use the subscription in OpenCode due to Anthropic's ToS change. 2. How did you choose what models to use in the different agents? Do you believe or know they are better for certain tasks?

> due to Anthropic's ToS change.

Not a change, but enforcing terms that have been there all the time.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#263
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not satire but I see where you're coming from. Applying distributed human team concepts to a porting task squeezes extra performance from LLMs much further up the diminishing returns curve. That matters because porting projects are actually well-suited for autonomous agents: existing code provides context, objective criteria catch more LLM-grade bugs than greenfield work, and established unit tests offer clear t…

I don't know about something this complex , but right this moment I have something similar running in Claude Code in another window, and it is very helpful even with a much simpler setup: If you have these agents do everything at the "top level" they lose track. The moment you introduce sub-agents, you can have the top level run in a tight loop of "tell agent X to do the next task; tell agent Y to review the work; re…

Humans seem to be similar. If a real product designer would dive into all the technical details and code of a product, he would likely forget at least some of the vision behind what the product is actually supposed to be.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#265
I didn't sleep enough, or slept for 10 years.

This thread seems surreal, I see multiple flow repositories mentioned with 10k+ stars. Comprehensive doc. genAI image as a logo.

Can anyone show me one product these things have accomplished please ?

I used some frontier LLM yesterday to see if it could finally produce simple cascading style sheet fix. After a few dozens attempts and steering, a couple of hours and half a million token wasted it couldn't. So I fixed the issue myself and I went to bed.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#266
post #71
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 ho…

Uhuh, heard the same thing about IDEs, Machine Learning in your tools and others. Yet the most impressive people that I’ve met, actual wizards who could achieve what no one else could, were using EMacs or Vim.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#267
This feels like massively overengineering something very simple.

Agents are stateless functions with a limited heap (context window) that degrades in quality as it fills. Once you see it that way, the whole swarm paradigm is just function scoping and memory management cosplaying as an org chart:

Agent = function

Role = scope constraints

Context window = local memory

Shared state file = global state

Orchestration = control flow

The solution isn't assigning human-like roles to stateless functions. It's shared state (a markdown file) and clear constraints.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#268

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…

Every time I read something like this, it strikes me as an attempt to convince people that various people-management memes are still going to be relevant moving forward. Or even that they currently work when used on humans today. The reality is these roles don't even work in human organizations today. Classic "job_description == bottom_of_funnel_competency" fallacy. If they make the LLMs more productive, it is probab…

I think it's just the opposite, as LLMs feed on human language. "You are a scrum master." Automatically encodes most of what the LLM needs to know. Trying to describe the same role in a prompt would be a lot more difficult.

Maybe a different separation of roles would be more efficient in theory, but an LLM understands "you are a scrum master" from the get go, while "you are a zhydgry bhnklorts" needs explanation.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#269
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many people really like the gamification and complex role playing. That is how GitHub got popular, that is how Rube Goldberg agent/swarm/cult setups get popular. It attracts the gamers and LARPers. Unfortunately, management is on their side until they find out after four years or so that it is all a scam.

I've heard some people say that "vibe coding" with chatbots is like slot machines, you just keep "propmting" until you hit the jackpot. And there was some earlier study that people _felt_ more productive even if they weren't (caveat that this was with older models), which aligns with the sort of time-dilation people feel when gambling. I guess "agentic swarms" are the next evolution of the meta-game, the perfect nerd…

Extending this -- unlike real slot machines, there is no definite state of won or not for the person prompting, only if they've been convinced they've won, and that comes down to how much you're willing to verify the code it has provided, or better, fully test it (which no one wants to do), versus the reality where they do a little light testing and say it's good enough and move on.

Recently fixed a problem over a few days, and found that it was duplicated though differently enough that I asked my coworker to try fixing it with an LLM (he was the originator of the duplicated code, and I didn't want to mess up what was mostly functioning code). Using an LLM, he seemingly did in 1 hour what took me maybe a day or two of tinkering and fixing. After we hop off the call, I do a code read to make sure I understand it fully, and immediately see an issue and test it further only to find out.. it did not in fact fix it, and suffered from the same problems, but it convincingly LOOKED like it fixed it. He was ecstatic at the time-saved while presenting it, and afterwards, alone, all I could think about was how our business users were going to be really unhappy being gaslit into thinking it was fixed because literally every tester I've ever met would definitely have missed it without understanding the code.

People are overjoyed with good enough, and I'm starting to think maybe I'm the problem when it comes to progress? It just gives me Big Short vibes -- why am I drawing attention to this obvious issue in quality, I'm just the guy in the casino screaming "does no one else see the obvious problem with shipping this?" And then I start to understand, yes I am the problem: people have been selling eachother dog water product for millenia because at the end of the day, Edison is the person people remember, not the guy who came after that made it near perfect or hammered out all the issues. Good enough takes its place in history, not perfection. The trick others have found out is they just need to get to the point that they've secured the money and have time to get away before the customer realizes the world of hurt they've paid for.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the main reason splitting up work is effective is context management. For instance, if an agent only has to be concerned with one task, its context can be massively reduced. Further, the next agent can just be told the outcome, it also has reduced context load, because it doesn't need to do the inner workings, just know what the result is. For instance, a security testing agent just needs to…

Which, ultimately, is not such a big difference to the reason we split up work for humans, either. Human job specialization is just context management over the course of 30 years.

> Which, ultimately, is not such a big difference to the reason we split up work for humans,

That's mostly for throughput, and context management.

It's context management in that no human knows everything, but that's also throughput in a way because of how human learning works.

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