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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

#481

Post by Shebanator »

p1necone wrote: post #425
noxa wrote: post #179

I'm the author of the report in there. The stop-phrase-guard didn't get attached but here it is: https://gist.github.com/benvanik/ee00bd1b6c9154d6545c63e06a3... You can watch for these yourself - they are strong indicators of shallow thinking. If you still have logs from Jan/Feb you can point claude at that issue and have it go look for the same things (read:edit ratio shifts, thinking character shifts before the red…

The "this test failure is preexisting so I'm going to ignore it" thing has been happening a lot for me lately, it's so annoying. Unless it makes a change and then immediately runs tests and it's obvious from the name/contents that the failing test is directly related to the change that was made it will ignore it and not try to fix.

This problem has been around for a long time. Not only that but it would say this even when the problems were directly caused by their code.

I put a line in my CLAUDE.md that says "If a test doesn't pass, fix it regardless of whether it was pre-existing or in a different part of the code."

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

#482

Post by andoando »

bcherny wrote: post #234
freedomben wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of the code/context gets attached in the /bug report?

When you submit a /bug we get a way to see the contents of the conversation. We don't see anything else in your codebase.

Isnt the codebase in the context window?

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

#483

Post by subscribed »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #358
johndough wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is hilarious that there are four different ways to set settings (settings.json config file, environment variable, slash commands and magical chat keywords). That kind of consistency has also been my own experience with LLMs.

It's not unique to LLMs. Take BASH: you've got `/etc/profile`, `~/.bash_profile,` `~/.bash_login`, `~/.bashrc`, `~/.profile`, environment variables, and shell options.

Yeah, but for ash/shells these files have wildly different purposes. I don't think it's so distinct with cc.

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

#484

Post by niteshpant »

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 added `CLAUDE_CODE_EFFORT_LEVEL=max` to my shell's env so that every session is always effort:max by default

:)

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

#485

Post by adi_kurian »

vecter wrote: post #346
wonnage wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP “bug report” is a wall of AI slop generated from looking at its own chat transcripts

Do you disagree with any of the data or conclusions?

I must admit, the fact that the writing was well formatted and structured was an instant turn off. I did find it insightful. I would have been more willing to read it if it was one lower case run on line with typos one would expect from a prepubescent child. I am both joking and being serious at the same time. What a world.

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

#486

Post by tstrimple »

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…

I've seen a lot of the issues mentioned in the issue. The attempts to end the session early are particularly annoying. We spend a while iterating on a plan and after every phase of implementation I get some variation of "That's a lot of work for today, should we wrap up?" like it's actively trying to drive sessions to a close. I wouldn't say it's useless for these tasks. But it's requiring more effort and guidance than it used to. It's also more likely to jump right into changes from a question I ask rather than addressing the question which is very annoying.

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

#487

Post by bcherny »

anonymoushn wrote: post #442
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…

How do you guys decide which settings should be configurable via environment variables but not settings files and which settings should be configurable via settings files but not environment variables?

All environment variables can also be configured via settings files (in the “env” field).

Our approach generally is to use env vars for more experimental and low usage settings, and reserve top-level settings for knobs that we expect customers will tune more frequently.

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

#488

Post by mvkel »

potsandpans wrote: post #473
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…

For anyone reading this and wondering where the truth could possibly be: We can't really know what the truth is, because Anthropic is tightly controlling how you interact with their product and provides their service through opaque processes. So all we can do is speculate. And in that speculation there's a lot of room (for the company) to bullshit or provide equally speculative responses, and (for outsiders) to searc…

I am reminded of OpenAI's first voice-to-voice demo a couple of years ago. I rewatched it and was shocked at how human it was; indiscernible from a real person. But the voice agent that we got sounds 20% better than Siri.

There's a hope that competition is what keeps these companies pushing to ship value to customers, but there are also billions of compute expense at stake, so there seems to be an understanding that nobody ships a product that is unsustainably competitive

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

#489

Post by latentsea »

Shebanator wrote: post #481
p1necone wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "this test failure is preexisting so I'm going to ignore it" thing has been happening a lot for me lately, it's so annoying. Unless it makes a change and then immediately runs tests and it's obvious from the name/contents that the failing test is directly related to the change that was made it will ignore it and not try to fix.

This problem has been around for a long time. Not only that but it would say this even when the problems were directly caused by their code. I put a line in my CLAUDE.md that says "If a test doesn't pass, fix it regardless of whether it was pre-existing or in a different part of the code."

This should be part of the system prompt. It's absolutely unacceptable to just to not at least try to investigate failures like this. I absolutely hate when it reaches this conclusion on its own and just continues on as if it's doing valid work.

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

#490

Post by hackerbrother »

subscribed wrote: post #483
SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not unique to LLMs. Take BASH: you've got `/etc/profile`, `~/.bash_profile,` `~/.bash_login`, `~/.bashrc`, `~/.profile`, environment variables, and shell options.

Yeah, but for ash/shells these files have wildly different purposes. I don't think it's so distinct with cc.

I don't think they're wildly different purposes. They're the same purpose (to set shell settings) with different scopes (all users, one user, interactive shells only, etc.).
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