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Claude Code: Anatomy of a Misfeature

olafalders.com

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Re: Claude Code: Anatomy of a Misfeature

#51

Post by ryandvm »

overgard wrote: post #39
dehrmann wrote: post #7

The headache I recently had was it somehow started interpreting mouse clicks in the terminal to mean I clicked an option when I was really just trying to get/confirm window focus.

They also randomly changed how copy-paste works in a way that made it really annoying to copy text. Vibe-coders pumping out features: this is the reaction you're going to get if you inflict this on your users! Nobody wants software that updates every day and changes in fundamental ways that are hard to keep up with.

Yes! This is awful. CC should not have copy/paste behavior that is different from literally every other CLI app.

Re: Claude Code: Anatomy of a Misfeature

#52

Post by Tadpole9181 »

blixt wrote: post #38

So much attribution to malintent here, but most likely they're trying to build a product with the features that they themselves would use, and from my own experience it's very frustrating to leave a Claude session running and come back to find it did nothing because it got stuck on a question. Furthermore, believing that the only thing saving you from disaster is Claude deciding to ask you a question is not a great c…

> and from my own experience it's very frustrating to leave a Claude session running and come back to find it did nothing because it got stuck on a question.

I cannot fathom implementing and shipping a feature to hundreds of thousands of people without even asking basic questions like: "what types of questions does Claude ask users".

Literally one of the most used plugins in their entire ecosystem, provided via their official plugin marketplace, is Superpowers. A plugin whose very first operating step is _asking numerous questions about product requirements_. Of course those prompts can't be skipped!

It wasn't even parameterized for Claude to tell the prompt what severity of question was being asked to allow at least _something_ to categorize urgency or expected response time.

Even more egregiously, 60 seconds!? The first time I noticed this happened was when it asked me a question, I turned to my second monitor to go look at some product documentation to get an answer, and by the time I turned back it had skipped me. How can I possibly provide any kind of informed answer in under 60 seconds? I can barely read some of its context for a question in 60 seconds!

I don't think they did this with malintent, but I do think this shows an enormous gap in judgement in how they handle the idea to delivery pipeline.

Re: Claude Code: Anatomy of a Misfeature

#53

Post by johnbarron »

trq_ wrote: post #47

Hi everyone, It's Thariq from the Claude Code team here. This was my change! I made the AskUserQuestion tool so am generally in charge of maintaining it. First, overall wanted to apologize and agree that this did not meet our bar and does not represent how we plan to ship on Claude Code. To give you a motivating sense, as the models get more powerful, usage patterns start to change. I'd gotten a lot of feedback that…

[dead]

Re: Claude Code: Anatomy of a Misfeature

#54

Post by neerajsi »

ryandvm wrote: post #51
overgard wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also randomly changed how copy-paste works in a way that made it really annoying to copy text. Vibe-coders pumping out features: this is the reaction you're going to get if you inflict this on your users! Nobody wants software that updates every day and changes in fundamental ways that are hard to keep up with.

Yes! This is awful. CC should not have copy/paste behavior that is different from literally every other CLI app.

I wonder if it's the same behavior as copilot cli. I dug into it when I got annoyed and found that there's a fundamental tension between rendering the cell based UI and supporting the terminal's native copy paste. At least on copilot cli there were extra zero width characters being copied.

Re: Claude Code: Anatomy of a Misfeature

#55

Post by demosthanos »

trq_ wrote: post #47

Hi everyone, It's Thariq from the Claude Code team here. This was my change! I made the AskUserQuestion tool so am generally in charge of maintaining it. First, overall wanted to apologize and agree that this did not meet our bar and does not represent how we plan to ship on Claude Code. To give you a motivating sense, as the models get more powerful, usage patterns start to change. I'd gotten a lot of feedback that…

For what it's worth, I totally understand the motivating use case here. There were absolutely times where I walked away from what I was hoping would be an hours-long project that would run to completion and came back to find that Claude had asked me a question early on and I'd missed out on a large amount of implementation time. So you were not imagining that the use case is real!

It's also worth adding that I really enjoy the AskUserQuestion feature and will regularly ask Claude to specifically use it instead of asking me questions in plain text because it's a lot easier to work with.

It's always good to learn from mistakes, and I appreciate both your work on this and you coming here to own it. Keep up the good work!

Re: Claude Code: Anatomy of a Misfeature

#56

Post by arjie »

Seemed fine to me. It’s ask user question not the permission gate. Maybe there should be a new feature enabling warning or something but I think this is the right default. The models are good enough to just proceed with an option of their own and then you can go correct them afterwards. Makes fleet management easier.

Re: Claude Code: Anatomy of a Misfeature

#58

Post by neerajsi »

overgard wrote: post #44
hedgehog wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's what some more experienced users want and the companies are following the well-trod path of optimizing heavily for power users at the expense of complexity, only now it's gotten easier to add absurd amount of code to a project. Not necessarily to make it work right. Personally I have some tasks where sessions between one and five days are typical so I appreciate that it's possible.

Experienced in what dimension? I've been using these tools for about a year and coding for 20+ years, and frankly these long horizon tasks are the OPPOSITE of what I want. I want quick iteration cycles so that it doesn't spend a lot of time and tokens building things I need to throw out. I think the people that mostly want long horizon tasks are: AI labs, because they want you to spend tokens, and vibe coders, who ar…

I work on systems code that is tricky to write, but with a good test harness. Being able to leave the agent unattended to try several paths when I'm generating the first draft of some code is very helpful.

Of course beating the code into shape for submission requires more manual work. But the draft stage is valuable to find unexpected friction points.

Re: Claude Code: Anatomy of a Misfeature

#59

Post by randysalami »

trq_ wrote: post #47

Hi everyone, It's Thariq from the Claude Code team here. This was my change! I made the AskUserQuestion tool so am generally in charge of maintaining it. First, overall wanted to apologize and agree that this did not meet our bar and does not represent how we plan to ship on Claude Code. To give you a motivating sense, as the models get more powerful, usage patterns start to change. I'd gotten a lot of feedback that…

I read the article but I find this response kind of strange. Am I alone in this?

Wanton accountability for a multi-billion dollar cutting edge company… leaves more to be desired from the best? Take Apple or Google or any top tech company of the past at its prime and compare. This kind of behavior then would probably reflect poorly on the institutions behind the tech and not maintain their image of technical brilliance because it shows weakness in a vulnerable way. It is human. It is not strategic.

By wanton accountability, I mean things like saying “This was my change!” or “ wanted to apologize and agree that this did not meet our bar and does not represent how we plan to ship on Claude Code”. It makes them (the company) look weak? Accountability is important but where, how, and when you do it is even more important. These stakes are, not joking, life and death, and in this big game of chess we get paid for, naivety not only in our technical implementation can weaken our position.

Not trying to attack, just trying to learn and probe with the community. Maybe a cost of this kind of transparency on the internet. I am wondering if this a new trend and tech companies are changing in a way I don’t understand! In any case, it’s really cool work that is being with Claude Code!

Re: Claude Code: Anatomy of a Misfeature

#60

Post by thewhitetulip »

randysalami wrote: post #59
trq_ wrote: post #47

Hi everyone, It's Thariq from the Claude Code team here. This was my change! I made the AskUserQuestion tool so am generally in charge of maintaining it. First, overall wanted to apologize and agree that this did not meet our bar and does not represent how we plan to ship on Claude Code. To give you a motivating sense, as the models get more powerful, usage patterns start to change. I'd gotten a lot of feedback that…

I read the article but I find this response kind of strange. Am I alone in this? Wanton accountability for a multi-billion dollar cutting edge company… leaves more to be desired from the best? Take Apple or Google or any top tech company of the past at its prime and compare. This kind of behavior then would probably reflect poorly on the institutions behind the tech and not maintain their image of technical brillianc…

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