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Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates

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Re: Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates

#21

Post by Larrikin »

StanAngeloff wrote: post #4
jgrahamc wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I've noticed is that whenever Claude says something like "the simplest fix is..." it's usually suggesting some horrible hack. And whenever I see that I go straight to the code it wants to write and challenge it.

That is the kind of thing that I've been fighting by being super explicit in CLAUDE.md. For whatever reason, instead of being much more thorough and making sure that files are being changed only after fully understanding the scope of the change (behaviour prior to Feb/Mar), Claude would just jump to the easiest fix now, with no backwards compatibility thinking and to hell with all existing tests. What is even worse i…

I did not use the previous version of Opus to notice the difference, but Sonnet 4.6 seems optimized to output the shortest possible answer. Usually it starts with a hack and if you challenge it, it will instead apologize and say to look at a previous answer with the smallest code snippet it can provide. Agentic isn't necessarily worse but ideating and exploring is awful compared to 4.5

Re: Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates

#22

Post by himata4113 »

Not unique to claude code, have noticed similar regressions. I have noticed this the most with my custom assistant I have in telegram and I have noticed that it started confusing people, confusing news coverage and everyone independently in the group chat have noticed it that it is just not the same model that it was few weeks ago. The efficiency gains didn't come from nowhere and it shows.

Re: Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates

#23

Post by ivanech »

petcat wrote: post #12

I have found that Claude Opus 4.6 is a better reviewer than it is an implementer. I switch off between Claude/Opus and Codex/GPT-5.4 doing reviews and implementations, and invariably Codex ends up having to do multiple rounds of reviews and requesting fixes before Claude finally gets it right (and then I review). When it is the other way around (Codex impl, Claude review), it's usually just one round of fixes after t…

Hmm in my experience (I've done a lot of head-to-heads), Opus 4.6 is a weaker reviewer than GPT 5.4 xhigh. 5.4 xhigh gives very deep, very high-signal reviews and catches serious bugs much more reliably. I think it's possible you're observing Opus 4.6's higher baseline acceptance rate instead of GPT 5.4's higher implementation quality bar.

Re: Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates

#24

Post by [deleted] »

summarity wrote: post #8

Not claude code specific, but I've been noticing this on Opus 4.6 models through Copilot and others as well. Whenever the phrase "simplest fix" appears, it's time to pull the emergency break. This has gotten much, much worse over the past few weeks. It will produce completely useless code, knowingly (because up to that phrase the reasoning was correct) breaking things. Today another thing started happening which are…

[deleted]

Re: Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates

#26

Post by _V_ »

cute_boi wrote: post #20
_V_ wrote: post #16

[flagged]

Specially this openclaw which is almost chocking my website to death. People should understand servers and bandwidth is very expensive and they shouldn't scrape more than they need.

Yeah, I have correctly set up robots.txt - if they won't respect that, F them. Bandwidth is not free and I don't mind giving it out to individuals, but I'm not feeding multi-billion dollar companies.

Re: Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates

#27

Post by virtualritz »

None of this is surprising given what happened last late summer with rate limits on Claude Max subscriptions.

And less so if you read [1] or similar assessments. I, too, believe that every token is subsidized heavily. From whatever angle you look at it.

Thusly quality/token/whatever rug pulls are inevitable, eventually. This is just another one.

[1] https://www.wheresyoured.at/subprimeai/

Re: Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates

#28

Post by petcat »

ivanech wrote: post #23
petcat wrote: post #12

I have found that Claude Opus 4.6 is a better reviewer than it is an implementer. I switch off between Claude/Opus and Codex/GPT-5.4 doing reviews and implementations, and invariably Codex ends up having to do multiple rounds of reviews and requesting fixes before Claude finally gets it right (and then I review). When it is the other way around (Codex impl, Claude review), it's usually just one round of fixes after t…

Hmm in my experience (I've done a lot of head-to-heads), Opus 4.6 is a weaker reviewer than GPT 5.4 xhigh. 5.4 xhigh gives very deep, very high-signal reviews and catches serious bugs much more reliably. I think it's possible you're observing Opus 4.6's higher baseline acceptance rate instead of GPT 5.4's higher implementation quality bar.

Maybe it's all just anecdotal then. Everyone is having different experiences.

Maybe we're being A/B tested.

Re: Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates

#29

Post by rishabhaiover »

Retr0id wrote: post #17

This seems anecdotal but with extra words. I'm fairly sure this is just the "wow this is so much better than the previous-gen model" effect wearing off.

Nope, there is a categorical degradation in quality of output, especially with medium to high effort thinking tasks.

Re: Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates

#30

Post by mikkupikku »

StanAngeloff wrote: post #2

(Being true to the HN guidelines, I’ve used the title exactly as seen on the GitHub issue) I was wondering if anyone else is also experiencing this? I have personally found that I have to add more and more CLAUDE.md guide rails, and my CLAUDE.md files have been exploding since around mid-March, to the point where I actually started looking for information online and for other people collaborating my personal observat…

Cannot say I've noticed, but I run virtually everything through plan mode and a few back and forth rounds of that for anything moderately complex, so that could be helping.
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