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Anatomy of the .claude/ folder

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Re: Anatomy of the .claude/ folder

#51

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

ramon156 wrote: post #4
bagrow wrote: post #2

Here's a question that I hope is not too off-topic. Do people find the nano-banana cartoon infographics to be helpful, or distracting? Personally, I'm starting to tire seeing all the little cartoon people and the faux-hand-drawn images. Wouldn't Tufte call this chartjunk?

LinkedIn loves these, even if they're broken. But they had already lost me at all the links, and the fact there's not a red wire through the entire article. The first thing my eyes skimmed was: > CLAUDE.md: Claude’s instruction manual > This is the most important file in the entire system. When you start a Claude Code session, the first thing it reads is CLAUDE.md. It loads it straight into the system prompt and keep…

Maybe. But I kind of view LinkedIn as a social network for people who only by the grace of a couple better decisions are talking about real business and not multilevel marketing schemes… but otherwise use the same themes and terminologies.

Like mostly people who have confused luck and success, or business acumen for religion.

So I wouldn’t use LinkedIn as a positive data point of what’s hot.

Re: Anatomy of the .claude/ folder

#52

Post by Fishkins »

exitb wrote: post #17

I’m seeing this more and more, where people build this artificial wall you supposedly need to climb to try agentic coding. That’s not the right way to start at all. You should start with a fresh .claude, empty AGENTS.md, zero skills and MCP and learn to operate the thing first.

I agree with most of this, with one important exception: you should have some form of sandboxing in place before running any local AI agent. The easiest way to do that is with .claude/settings.json[0].

This is important no matter how experienced you are, but arguable the most important when you don't know what you're doing.

0: or if you don't want to learn about that, you can use Claude Code Web

Re: Anatomy of the .claude/ folder

#53

Post by btucker »

bagrow wrote: post #2

Here's a question that I hope is not too off-topic. Do people find the nano-banana cartoon infographics to be helpful, or distracting? Personally, I'm starting to tire seeing all the little cartoon people and the faux-hand-drawn images. Wouldn't Tufte call this chartjunk?

It's not necessarily an AI-generated infographics issue, it's that these aren't good infographics. The graphic part is adding minimal value.

Re: Anatomy of the .claude/ folder

#54

Post by dbmikus »

embedding-shape wrote: post #23
Synthetic7346 wrote: post #21

I wish all model providers would converge on a standard set of files, so I could switch easily from Claude to Codex to Cursor to Opencode depending on the situation

Issue is that both harness and specific model matters a lot in what type of instruction works best, if you were to use Anthrophic's models together with the best way to do prompting with Codex and GPT models, you'd get a lot worse results compared to if you use GPT models with Codex, prompted in the way GPTs react best to them. I don't think people realize exactly how important the specific prompts are, with the same…

Are there any good guides on how to write prompt files tailored to different agents?

Would also be interested in examples of a CLAUDE.md file that works well in Claude, but works poorly with Codex.

Re: Anatomy of the .claude/ folder

#56

Post by bityard »

phyzix5761 wrote: post #28

Is there a completely free coding assistant agent that doesn't require you to give a credit card to use it? I recently tried IntelliJ for Kotlin development and it wanted me to give a credit card for a 30 day trial. I just want something that scans my repo and I tell it the changes I want and it does it. If possible, it would also run the existing tests to make sure its changes don't break anything.

There are lots! Too many to cover in a single HN comment, and this space is evolving rapidly so I encourage you to look around.

While the coding assistants are pretty much universally free, you still need to connect them to a model. The model tokens generally cost something once you've gone past a certain quota.

I'm not sure if this is still true, but if you have a Google account, Gemini Code Assist had a quite generous "free tier" that I used for a while and found it do be pretty decent.

Re: Anatomy of the .claude/ folder

#57

Post by graypegg »

sarchertech wrote: post #38
graypegg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm finding a pretty good niche for myself honestly. IMO, Software engineering is more so splitting into different professions based on the work is produces. This sort of "prompt and pray" flow really works for people, as in they can make products and money, however, I do think the people that succeed today also would've reached for no-code tools 5 years ago and seen similar success. It's just faster and more…

I think this is mostly right. The primary difference is that with no code you had to change platforms, but the Prompt and Pray method can be brought to bear on any software easily even the air traffic avoidance system. It shouldn’t be, but it’s going to take some catastrophic events to convince people that we have to work to make sure we understand the systems we’re building and keep everything from devolving into vi…

> the Prompt and Pray method can be brought to bear on any software easily even the air traffic avoidance system.

I guess that's why I see it as a separate profession, as in we have to actually profess a standard for how a professional in our field acts and believes. I think it's OK for it to bifurcate into two different fields, but Software Engineering would need to specifically reject prompt-and-pray on a principled and rational basis.

Sadly yes, that might require real cost to life in order to find out the "why" side of that rational basis. If you meet anyone that went to an engineering school in Québec, ask them about the ceremony they did and the ring they received. [0] It's not like that ceremony fixes anything, but it's a solemn declaration of responsibility which to me at least, sets a contract with society that says "we won't make things that harm you".

[0] https://ironring.ca/home-en/

    > [The] history of the 1907 failure of the Quebec City bridge, which was the inspiration for the Calling of an Engineer ceremony.

Re: Anatomy of the .claude/ folder

#59

Post by post-it »

Fishkins wrote: post #52
exitb wrote: post #17

I’m seeing this more and more, where people build this artificial wall you supposedly need to climb to try agentic coding. That’s not the right way to start at all. You should start with a fresh .claude, empty AGENTS.md, zero skills and MCP and learn to operate the thing first.

I agree with most of this, with one important exception: you should have some form of sandboxing in place before running any local AI agent. The easiest way to do that is with .claude/settings.json[0]. This is important no matter how experienced you are, but arguable the most important when you don't know what you're doing. 0: or if you don't want to learn about that, you can use Claude Code Web

The default sandboxing works fine for me. It asks before running any command, and I can whitelist directories for reading and non-compound commands.

Re: Anatomy of the .claude/ folder

#60

Post by [deleted] »

bityard wrote: post #56
phyzix5761 wrote: post #28

Is there a completely free coding assistant agent that doesn't require you to give a credit card to use it? I recently tried IntelliJ for Kotlin development and it wanted me to give a credit card for a 30 day trial. I just want something that scans my repo and I tell it the changes I want and it does it. If possible, it would also run the existing tests to make sure its changes don't break anything.

There are lots! Too many to cover in a single HN comment, and this space is evolving rapidly so I encourage you to look around. While the coding assistants are pretty much universally free, you still need to connect them to a model. The model tokens generally cost something once you've gone past a certain quota. I'm not sure if this is still true, but if you have a Google account, Gemini Code Assist had a quite gener…

[deleted]
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