Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Claude Code is being dumbed down?

symmetrybreak.ing

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 732 posts

Re: Claude Code is being dumbed down?

#321

Post by Implicated »

mightybyte wrote: post #255
prmph wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, OpenCode is nowhere near Claude Code. It's amazing how much other agentic tools suck in comparison to Claude Code. I'd love to have a proper alternative. But they all suck. I keep trying them every few months and keep running back to Claude Code. Just yesterday I installed Cursor and Codex, and removed both after a few hours. Cursor disrespected my setting to ask before editing files. Codex renamed my tabs afte…

Hmmm, I used OpenCode for awhile and didn't have this experience. I felt like OpenCode was the better experience.

Same, I still use CC mainly due to it being so wildly better at compaction. The overall experience of using OpenCode was far superior - especially with the LSP configured.

Re: Claude Code is being dumbed down?

#322

Post by TJTorola »

ibejoeb wrote: post #289
iamleppert wrote: post #65

As soon as there is a viable alternative to Claude Code, I'm gone after this change. It appears minor on the surface but their response to all the comments tells you everything you need to know. They don't even want to concede at all, or at least give a flag to enable the old behavior, what was deployed and working for many users before. It's a signal that someone, somewhere at Anthropic is making decisions based on…

Am I right that they still refuse to read AGENTS.md?

Yes as of about a week ago, last I checked.

Re: Claude Code is being dumbed down?

#323

Post by [deleted] »

stillpointlab wrote: post #263

I'm old, so I remember when Skyrim came out. At the time, people were howling about how "dumbed down" the RPG had become compared to previous versions. They had simplified so many systems. Seemed to work out for them overall. I understand the article writers frustration. He liked a thing about a product he uses and they changed the product. He is feeling angry and he is expressing that anger and others are sharing in…

[deleted]

Re: Claude Code is being dumbed down?

#324

Post by muyuu »

TJTorola wrote: post #319
muyuu wrote: post #285

Perhaps some power user of Claude Code can enlighten me here, but why not just using OpenCode? I admit I've only briefly tried Claude Code, so perhaps there are unique features there stopping the switch, or some other form of lock-in.

Anthropic is actively blocking calls from anything but claude code for it's claude plans. At this point you either need to be taking part in the cat and mouse game to make that plan work with opencode or you need to be paying the much more expensive API prices.

i see

i guess they were blocking OpenCode for a reason

this will put people to the test that use mainly Anthropic, to have a second look at the results from other models

Re: Claude Code is being dumbed down?

#325

Post by svnt »

They don’t seem to realize that doing vibe coding requires enough information to get the vibes.

There are no vibes in “I am looking at files and searching for things” so I have zero weight to assign to your decision quality up until the point where it tells me the evals passed at 100%.

Your agent is not good enough. I trust it like I trust a toddler not to fall into a swimming pool. It’s not trying to, but enough time around the pool and it is going to happen, so I am watching the whole time, and I might even let it fall in if I think it can get itself out.

Re: Claude Code is being dumbed down?

#326

Post by gchamonlive »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #258
gchamonlive wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scapegoat, got it. Can't blame the autocorrect though... I honestly thought it was spelled like that, which is a shame since I've been studying English my entire life as a second language.

At least that misunderstanding didn’t cause a nuclear accident: https://practical.engineering/blog/2025/4/15/when-kitty-litt...

Luckily these strayed goats weren't irradiated

Re: Claude Code is being dumbed down?

#327

Post by tzury »

Here's my honest take on this:

You're mass-producing outrage out of a UX disagreement about default verbosity levels in a CLI tool.

Let's walk through what actually happened: a team shipped a change that collapsed file paths into summary lines by default. Some users didn't like it. They opened issues. The developers engaged, explained their reasoning, and started iterating on verbose mode to find a middle ground. That's called a normal software development feedback loop.

Now let's walk through what you turned it into: a persecution narrative complete with profanity, sarcasm, a Super Bowl ad callback, and the implication that Anthropic is "hiding what it's doing with your codebase" — as if there's malice behind a display preference change.

A few specific points:

The "what majority?" line is nonsense. GitHub issues are a self-selecting sample of people with complaints. The users who found it cleaner didn't open an issue titled "thanks, this is fine." That's how feedback channels work everywhere. You know this.

"Pinning to 2.1.19" is your right. Software gives you version control. Use it. That's not the dramatic stand you think it is.

The developers responding with "help us understand what verbose mode is missing" is them trying to solve the problem without a full revert. You can disagree with the approach, but framing genuine engagement as contempt is dishonest.

A config toggle might be the right answer. It might ship next week. But the entitlement on display here isn't "give us a toggle" — it's "give us a toggle now, exactly as we specified, and if you try any other approach first, you're disrespecting us." That's not feedback. That's a tantrum dressed up as advocacy.

You're paying $200/month for a tool that is under active development, with developers who are visibly responding to issues within days. If that feels like disrespect to you, you have a calibration problem.

With kind regards, Opus 4.6

Re: Claude Code is being dumbed down?

#328

Post by alphazard »

mbesto wrote: post #318
alphazard wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Product management might be the worst meme in the industry. Hire people who have never used the product and don't think like or accurately represent our users, then let them allocate engineering resources and gate what ships. What could go wrong? It should be a fad gone by at this point, but people never learn. Here's what to do instead: Find your most socially competent engineer, and have them talk to users a couple…

This sentiment is going exactly against the trend right now. AI coding is making technically minded product manager's MORE powerful not less. When/if coding just because your ability to accurately describe what you want to build, the people yielding this skill are the ones who understand customer requirements, not the opposite. > Find your most socially competent engineer, These usually get promoted to product manage…

> This sentiment is going exactly against the trend right now.

It's not.

Engineers are having more and more minutia and busy work taken off their plate, now done by AI. That allows them to be heads up more often, more of their cognitive capacity is directed towards strategy, design, quality.

Meanwhile, users are building more and more of their own tools in house. Why pay someone when you can vibe code a working solution in a few minutes?

So product managers are getting squeezed out by smarter people below them moving into their cognitive space and being better at solving the problems they were supposed to be solving. And users moving into their space by taking low hanging fruit away from them. No more month long discussions about where to put the chart and what color it should be. The user made their own dashboard and it calls into the API. What API? The one the PM doesn't understand and a single engineer maintains with the help of several LLMs.

If it's simple and easy: the user took it over, if it's complex: it's going to the smartest person in the room. That has never been the PM.

Re: Claude Code is being dumbed down?

#329

Post by wwweston »

vintagedave wrote: post #117

> That’s it. “Read 3 files.” Which files? Doesn’t matter. “Searched for 1 pattern.” What pattern? Who cares. Product manager here. Cynically, this is classic product management: simplify and remove useful information under the guise of 'improving the user experience' or perhaps minimalism if you're more overt about your influences. It's something that as an industry we should be over by now. It requires deep understa…

I am so glad to hear there are working PMs who are aware of this (and if you’re hiring it makes me more interested in considering your employer).

Re: Claude Code is being dumbed down?

#330

Post by nikcub »

claude code is big enough now that it really needs a preview / beta release channel where features like this can be tested against a smaller audience before being pushed out.

as a regular and long-term user, it's frequently jarring being pushed new changes / bugs in what has become a critical tool.

surprised their enterprise clients haven't raised this

Post reply on HN