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How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution

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Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution

#131

Post by zmmmmm »

I actually don't really like a few of things about this approach.

First, the "big bang" write it all at once. You are going to end up with thousands of lines of code that were monolithically produced. I think it is much better to have it write the plan and formulate it as sensible technical steps that can be completed one at a time. Then you can work through them. I get that this is not very "vibe"ish but that is kind of the point. I want the AI to help me get to the same point I would be at with produced code AND understanding of it, just accelerate that process. I'm not really interested in just generating thousands of lines of code that nobody understands.

Second, the author keeps refering to adjusting the behaviour, but never incorporating that into long lived guidance. To me, integral with the planning process is building an overarching knowledge base. Every time you're telling it there's something wrong, you need to tell it to update the knowledge base about why so it doesn't do it again.

Finally, no mention of tests? Just quick checks? To me, you have to end up with comprehensive tests. Maybe to the author it goes without saying, but I find it is integral to build this into the planning. Certain stages you will want certain types of tests. Some times in advance of the code (so TDD style) other times built alongside it or after.

It's definitely going to be interesting to see how software methodology evolves to incorporate AI support and where it ultimately lands.

Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution

#132

Post by noduerme »

hashmap wrote: post #42
haolez wrote: post #12

> Notice the language: “deeply”, “in great details”, “intricacies”, “go through everything”. This isn’t fluff. Without these words, Claude will skim. It’ll read a file, see what a function does at the signature level, and move on. You need to signal that surface-level reading is not acceptable. This makes no sense to my intuition of how an LLM works. It's not that I don't believe this works, but my mental model doesn…

these sort-of-lies might help: think of the latent space inside the model like a topological map, and when you give it a prompt, you're dropping a ball at a certain point above the ground, and gravity pulls it along the surface until it settles. caveat though, thats nice per-token, but the signal gets messed up by picking a token from a distribution, so each token you're regenerating and re-distorting the signal. lea…

Hah! Reading this, my mind inverted it a bit, and I realized ... it's like the claw machine theory of gradient descent. Do you drop the claw into the deepest part of the pile, or where there's the thinnest layer, the best chance of grabbing something specific? Everyone in everu bar has a theory about claw machines. But the really funny thing that unites LLMs with claw machines is that the biggest question is always whether they dropped the ball on purpose.

The claw machine is also a sort-of-lie, of course. Its main appeal is that it offers the illusion of control. As a former designer and coder of online slot machines... totally spin off into pages on this analogy, about how that illusion gets you to keep pulling the lever... but the geographic rendition you gave is sort of priceless when you start making the comparison.

Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution

#133

Post by r0b05 »

nostrademons wrote: post #85
haolez wrote: post #12

> Notice the language: “deeply”, “in great details”, “intricacies”, “go through everything”. This isn’t fluff. Without these words, Claude will skim. It’ll read a file, see what a function does at the signature level, and move on. You need to signal that surface-level reading is not acceptable. This makes no sense to my intuition of how an LLM works. It's not that I don't believe this works, but my mental model doesn…

It's the attention mechanism at work, along with a fair bit of Internet one-up-manship. The LLM has ingested all of the text on the Internet, as well as Github code repositories, pull requests, StackOverflow posts, code reviews, mailing lists, etc. In a number of those content sources, there will be people saying "Actually, if you go into the details of..." or "If you look at the intricacies of the problem" or "If yo…

This is such a good explanation. Thanks

Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution

#134

Post by nazgul17 »

haolez wrote: post #12

> Notice the language: “deeply”, “in great details”, “intricacies”, “go through everything”. This isn’t fluff. Without these words, Claude will skim. It’ll read a file, see what a function does at the signature level, and move on. You need to signal that surface-level reading is not acceptable. This makes no sense to my intuition of how an LLM works. It's not that I don't believe this works, but my mental model doesn…

It's very much believable, to me.

In image generation, it's fairly common to add "masterpiece", for example.

I don't think of the LLM as a smart assistant that knows what I want. When I tell it to write some code, how does it know I want it to write the code like a world renowned expert would, rather than a junior dev?

I mean, certainly Anthropic has tried hard to make the former the case, but the Titanic inertia from internet scale data bias is hard to overcome. You can help the model with these hints.

Anyway, luckily this is something you can empirically verify. This way, you don't have to take anyone's word. If anything, if you find I'm wrong in your experiments, please share it!

Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution

#135

Post by glerk »

chickensong wrote: post #55
jcdavis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a wild time to be in software development. Nobody(1) actually knows what causes LLMs to do certain things, we just pray the prompt moves the probabilities the right way enough such that it mostly does what we want. This used to be a field that prided itself on deterministic behavior and reproducibility. Now? We have AGENTS.md files that look like a parent talking to a child with all the bold all-caps, double emph…

For Claude at least, the more recent guidance from Anthropic is to not yell at it. Just clear, calm, and concise instructions.

Yep, with Claude saying "please" and "thank you" actually works. If you build rapport with Claude, you get rewarded with intuition and creativity. Codex, on the other hand, you have to slap it around like a slave gollum and it will do exactly what you tell it to do, no more, no less.

Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution

#136

Post by girvo »

zmmmmm wrote: post #131

I actually don't really like a few of things about this approach. First, the "big bang" write it all at once. You are going to end up with thousands of lines of code that were monolithically produced. I think it is much better to have it write the plan and formulate it as sensible technical steps that can be completed one at a time. Then you can work through them. I get that this is not very "vibe"ish but that is kin…

The articles approach matches mine, but I've learned from exactly the things you're pointing out.

I get the PLAN.md (or equivalent) to be separated into "phases" or stages, then carefully prompt (because Claude and Codex both love to "keep going") it to only implement that stage, and update the PLAN.md

Tests are crucial too, and form another part of the plan really. Though my current workflow begins to build them later in the process than I would prefer...

Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution

#140

Post by klipt »

jcdavis wrote: post #25
haolez wrote: post #12

> Notice the language: “deeply”, “in great details”, “intricacies”, “go through everything”. This isn’t fluff. Without these words, Claude will skim. It’ll read a file, see what a function does at the signature level, and move on. You need to signal that surface-level reading is not acceptable. This makes no sense to my intuition of how an LLM works. It's not that I don't believe this works, but my mental model doesn…

Its a wild time to be in software development. Nobody(1) actually knows what causes LLMs to do certain things, we just pray the prompt moves the probabilities the right way enough such that it mostly does what we want. This used to be a field that prided itself on deterministic behavior and reproducibility. Now? We have AGENTS.md files that look like a parent talking to a child with all the bold all-caps, double emph…

Sufficiently advanced technology has become like magic: you have to prompt the electronic genie with the right words or it will twist your wishes.
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