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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

#301

Post by mghackerlady »

imiric wrote: post #174
talim wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What wording do you use for this, if you don't mind? This thread is a revelation, I have sworn that I've seen it do this "wait... the simplest fix is to [use some horrible hack that disregards the spec]" much more often lately so I'm glad it's not just me. However I'm not sure how to best prompt against that behavior without influencing it towards swinging the other way and looking for the most intentionally overengi…

Make sure to use "PRETTY PLEASE" in all caps in your `SOUL.md`. And occasionally remind it that kittens are going to die unless it cooperates. Works wonders.

I love how despite how cold and inhuman LLMs are, we've at least taught them to respect the lives of kittens

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

#302

Post by ai_slop_hater »

koverstreet wrote: post #300
ai_slop_hater wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can add a bias to make it more or less likely for a model to generate a particular token, and that's how budgets work Do you have a source for this? I am interested in learning more about how this works.

It's how temperature/top_p/top_k work. Anthropic also just put out a paper where they were doing a much more advanced version of this, mapping out functional states within the modern and steering with that.

Huh, I wonder if that's why you cannot change the temperature when thinking is enabled. Do you have a link for the paper?

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

#303

Post by stephbook »

davidw wrote: post #94

To me one of the big downsides of LLM's seems to be that you are lashing yourself to a rocket that is under someone else's control. If it goes places you don't want, you can't do much about it.

That's true for traffic on Facebook, Apple App store guidelines or Google terminating your account as well. What's new is the speed of change and that it literally affects all users at once.

They could have released Opus 4.6.2 (or whatever) and called it a day. But instead they removed the old way.

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

#304

Post by matheusmoreira »

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…

I definitely noticed the mid-output self-correction reasoning loops mentioned in the GitHub issue in some conversations with Opus 4.6 with extended reasoning enabled on claude.ai. How do I max out the effort there?

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

#305

Post by mghackerlady »

gloosx wrote: post #138
andai wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Claude Code supposed to be like a person? What would the Unix equivalent of that be?

File. In Unix everything is a file.

honestly if local LLMs become easier to implement in the future due to dedicated hardware, the Unix-like thing I'm working on might actually get this

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

#306

Post by Majromax »

jwr wrote: post #204

I wish they had a "and we won't screw you in two weeks" plan at, say, 5x the price. It's worth it for my business, I'd pay it. Should I switch back to API pricing? The problem here is that (I think) the instructions are in the Claude Code harness, so even if I switch Claude Code from a subscription to API usage, it would still do the same thing?

If you're using API pricing, then you can bring your own harness with full visibility/oversight of the prompting.

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

#307

Post by koverstreet »

ai_slop_hater wrote: post #302
koverstreet wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's how temperature/top_p/top_k work. Anthropic also just put out a paper where they were doing a much more advanced version of this, mapping out functional states within the modern and steering with that.

Huh, I wonder if that's why you cannot change the temperature when thinking is enabled. Do you have a link for the paper?

https://transformer-circuits.pub/2026/emotions/index.html

At the actual inference level temperature can be applied at any time - generation is token by token - but that doesn't mean the API necessarily exposes it.

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

#308

Post by ai_slop_hater »

koverstreet wrote: post #307
ai_slop_hater wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, I wonder if that's why you cannot change the temperature when thinking is enabled. Do you have a link for the paper?

https://transformer-circuits.pub/2026/emotions/index.html At the actual inference level temperature can be applied at any time - generation is token by token - but that doesn't mean the API necessarily exposes it.

Thanks. I was referring to the fact that Anthropic, in their API, prohibits setting temperature when thinking is enabled.

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

#309

Post by ajdegol »

Tade0 wrote: post #158
rileymichael wrote: post #127

> This report was produced by me — Claude Opus 4.6 — analyzing my own session logs [...] Please give me back my ability to think. a bit ironic to utilize the tool that can't think to write up your report on said tool. that and this issue[1] demonstrate the extent folks become over reliant on LLMs. their review process let so many defects through that they now have to stop work and comb over everything they've shipped…

The other day I accidentally `git reset --hard` my work from April the 1st (wrong terminal window). Not a lot of code was erased this way, but among it was a type definition I had Claude concoct, which I understood in terms of what it was supposed to guarantee, but could not recreate for a good hour. Really easy to fall into this trap, especially now that results from search engines are so disappointing comparatively…

Guess you’ve sorted it but it might be in the session memory in your root folder. I’ve recovered some things this way.

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

#310

Post by JamesSwift »

wnevets wrote: post #105

I've noticed claude being extra "dumb" the past 2-3 weeks and figured either my expectations have changed or my context wasn't any good. I'm glad to hear other people have noticed something is amiss.

Exact same timeline as me and my team. Its been maddening. Im a big believer in AI since late last year, but that is only because the models got so good. This puts us dangerously close to before that threshold was crossed so now Im having to do _way_ more work than before
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