131–140 of 312 posts
The claim that "whatever you write in CLAUDE.md, Claude will follow" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. In practice CLAUDE.md is a suggestion, not a contract. Complex tasks and compaction will dilute the use of CLAUDE.md, especially once the context window runs out.
Getting claude to follow your guidance files consistently is a bit maddening.
Plain Claude, ask it to write a plan, review plan, then tell it to execute still works the best in my experience.
Building your AI agent "toolkit" is becoming the equivalent of the perfect "productivity" setup where you spend your time reading blog posts, watching YouTube videos telling you how to be productive and creating habits and rituals...only to be overtaken by a person with a simple paper list of tasks that they work through. Plain Claude, ask it to write a plan, review plan, then tell it to execute still works the best…
Building your AI agent "toolkit" is becoming the equivalent of the perfect "productivity" setup where you spend your time reading blog posts, watching YouTube videos telling you how to be productive and creating habits and rituals...only to be overtaken by a person with a simple paper list of tasks that they work through. Plain Claude, ask it to write a plan, review plan, then tell it to execute still works the best…
The reality is that if you actually know what you want, and can communicate it well (where the productivity app can be helpful), then you can do a lot with AI.
My experience is that most people don't actually know what they want. Or they don't understand what goes into what they want. Asking for a plan is a shortcut to gaining that understanding.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't come around any AI generated imagery in documents / slides that adds any value. It's more the opposite, they stand out like a sore thumb and often even reduce usability since text cannot be copied. Oh and don't get me started on leadership adding random AI generated images to their emails just to show that they use AI.
It may be survivorship bias, you only notice the AI ones that are bad.
The simple truth we're about to realize is there is no free lunch: a tool cannot inject more intent into a piece than its author put in. It might smooth out some blemishes or highlight some alternative choices, but it can't transform the input "make me a video game" into something greater than a statistical mix-mash of the concept. And traditional tools of automation give you a much better, more precise interface for intent than natural language, which allows these vagaries.
Building your AI agent "toolkit" is becoming the equivalent of the perfect "productivity" setup where you spend your time reading blog posts, watching YouTube videos telling you how to be productive and creating habits and rituals...only to be overtaken by a person with a simple paper list of tasks that they work through. Plain Claude, ask it to write a plan, review plan, then tell it to execute still works the best…
Emacs init file bikeshedding comes to mind…
Feel little like this is generated and not based on experience. Claude.md should be short. Typescript strict mode isnt a gotcha, itll figure that out on its own easily, imo omit things like that. People put far too much stuff in claude, just a few lines and links to docs is all it needs. You can also @Agents.md and put everything there instead. Dont skills supercede commands? Subagents are good esp if you specify mod…
> Dont skills supercede commands? Don't skills sit in context while custom slash commands are only manually invoked? The difference isn't clear to me, especially since, upon googling it right now, I see that skills can also be invoked with a /slash.
Then all I have to do is let the agents actually figure out how to accomplish what I ask of them, with the highly scoped set of tools and sub agents I give them.
I find this works phenomenally, because all the .agent.md file is, is a description of what the tools available are. Nothing more complex, no LARP instructions. Just a straightforward 'here's what you've got'.
And with agents able to delegate to sub agents, the workflow is self-directing.
Working with a specific build system? Vibe code an MCP server for it.
Making a tool of my own? MCP server for dev testing and later use by agents.
On the flipside, I find it very questionable what value skills and reusable prompts give. I would compare it to an architect playing a recording of themselves from weeks ago when talking to their developers. The models encode a lot of knowledge, they just need orientation, not badgering, at this point.