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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

#281

Post by [deleted] »

plexicle wrote: post #245
bcherny wrote: post #209

Hey all, Boris from the Claude Code team here. I just responded on the issue, and cross-posting here for input. --- Hi, thanks for the detailed analysis. Before I keep going, I wanted to say I appreciate the depth of thinking & care that went into this. There's a lot here, I will try to break it down a bit. These are the two core things happening: > `redact-thinking-2026-02-12` This beta header hides thinking from th…

Ultrathink is back? I thought that wasn't a thing anymore. If I am following.. "Max" is above "High", but you can't set it to "Max" as a default. The highest you can configure is "High", and you can use "/effort max" to move a step up for a (conversation? session?), or "ultrathink" somewhere in the prompt to move a step up for a single turn. Is this accurate?

[deleted]

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

#282

Post by lambda »

ctoth wrote: post #256
bcherny wrote: post #209

Hey all, Boris from the Claude Code team here. I just responded on the issue, and cross-posting here for input. --- Hi, thanks for the detailed analysis. Before I keep going, I wanted to say I appreciate the depth of thinking & care that went into this. There's a lot here, I will try to break it down a bit. These are the two core things happening: > `redact-thinking-2026-02-12` This beta header hides thinking from th…

[flagged]

I guess one of the things I don't understand: how you expect a stochastic model, sold as a proprietary SaaS, with a proprietary (though briefly leaked) client, is supposed to be predictable in its behavior.

It seems like people are expecting LLM based coding to work in a predictable and controllable way. And, well, no, that's not how it works, and especially so when you're using a proprietary SaaS model where you can't control the exact model used, the inference setup its running on, the harness, the system prompts, etc. It's all just vibes, you're vibe coding and expecting consistency.

Now, if you were running a local weights model on your own inference setup, with an open source harness, you'd at least have some more control of the setup. Of course, it's still a stochastic model, trained on who knows what data scraped from the internet and generated from previous versions of the model; there will always be some non-determinism. But if you're running it yourself, you at least have some control and can potentially bisect configuration changes to find what caused particular behavior regressions.

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

#283

Post by bcherny »

antonvs wrote: post #265
bcherny wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a setting if you'd like to continue to see it: showThinkingSummaries. See the docs: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/settings#available-settings

> As I noted in the comment, Piece of free PR advice: this is fine in a nerd fight, but don't do this in comments that represent a company. Just repeat the relevant information.

Fair feedback, edited!

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

#284

Post by w10-1 »

bcherny wrote: post #209

Hey all, Boris from the Claude Code team here. I just responded on the issue, and cross-posting here for input. --- Hi, thanks for the detailed analysis. Before I keep going, I wanted to say I appreciate the depth of thinking & care that went into this. There's a lot here, I will try to break it down a bit. These are the two core things happening: > `redact-thinking-2026-02-12` This beta header hides thinking from th…

Here's the reply in context:

https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/42796#issue...

Sympathies: Users now completely depend on their jet-packs. If their tools break (and assuming they even recognize the problem). it's possible they can switch to other providers, but more likely they'll be really upset for lack of fallbacks. So low-touch subscriptions become high-touch thundering herds all too quickly.

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

#285

Post by whateveracct »

simooooo wrote: post #202
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…

How complex are we talking? I one shotted a game boy emulator in <6 minutes today

try one shotting something actually original and see how it goes

i keep getting nonsense

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

#286

Post by hombre_fatal »

tills13 wrote: post #203
monkpit wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> expletives per word Huh?

4.4 expletives per word is insane. Their prompts must look like ** ** ** ** implement ** ** ** ** no ** ** ** ** ** mistakes

Jeez, how fast we get used to alien tech.

You could introduce teleportation boots to humanity and within a few weeks we'd be complaining that sometimes we still have to walk the last 20 meters.

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

#287

Post by berkanunal »

bcherny wrote: post #254
dc_giant wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All right so what do I need to do so it does its job again? Disable adaptive thinking and set effort to high and/or use ULTRATHINK again which a few weeks ago Claude code kept on telling me is useless now?

Run this: /effort high

Imagine if all service providers were behaving like this.

> Ahh, sorry we broke your workflow.

> We found that `log_level=error` was a sweet spot for most users.

> To make it work as you expect it so, run `./bin/unpoop` it will set log_level=warn

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

#290

Post by Retr0id »

gchamonlive wrote: post #279
Retr0id wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like this: https://marginlab.ai/trackers/claude-code/ (see methodology section)

Kudos for the methodology. The only question I can come up with is that if the benchmarks are representative of daily use. Anecdotal or not, we see enough reports popping up to at least elicit some suspion as to service degradation which isn't shown in the charts. Hypothesis is that maybe the degradation experienced by users, assuming there is merit in the anecdotes, isn't picked up by the kind of tracking strategy u…

It's not my methodology to be clear, but they have picked up actual regressions that happened in the past - e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46815013
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