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Claude Cookbook

platform.claude.com

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Re: Claude Cookbook

#61

Post by troupo »

embedding-shape wrote: post #37
cloakandswagger wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember in 2023 when people thought "prompt engineering" would be the new software engineering and invested tons of time into learning CoT, ReAct, thread-of-thoughts, etc? Those were mostly obviated by reasoning models and harness updates by 2024. It seems pointless to invest energy into the latest/greatest AI technique or framework when they're going to either be absorbed or replaced on a 3 month cycle.

Isn't it clear that some people are better at working with/prompting LLMs than other people? Or is the idea that what you write to them and how you use them doesn't matter, it's all up to the model/harness? To me this seems clear, so then clearly this is a skill, which typically is called "prompt engineering". Specifically CoT or the other things you mention wasn't referred to as "prompt engineering" as far as I know…

> Or is the idea that what you write to them and how you use them doesn't matter, it's all up to the model/harness?

Yes, it is. Source: had models inplement complex things from scratch and bullshit regardless of whether it was a one-line prompt or a detailed "SOTA witchcraft magic spells that are guaranteed to work"

Re: Claude Cookbook

#63

Post by cloakandswagger »

embedding-shape wrote: post #37
cloakandswagger wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember in 2023 when people thought "prompt engineering" would be the new software engineering and invested tons of time into learning CoT, ReAct, thread-of-thoughts, etc? Those were mostly obviated by reasoning models and harness updates by 2024. It seems pointless to invest energy into the latest/greatest AI technique or framework when they're going to either be absorbed or replaced on a 3 month cycle.

Isn't it clear that some people are better at working with/prompting LLMs than other people? Or is the idea that what you write to them and how you use them doesn't matter, it's all up to the model/harness? To me this seems clear, so then clearly this is a skill, which typically is called "prompt engineering". Specifically CoT or the other things you mention wasn't referred to as "prompt engineering" as far as I know…

As part of a previous job I needed to audit internal AI usage from a largely non-technical employee population.

The prompts were, predictably, really bad. Broken English, sentence fragments, vague requests, lack of context. Yet somehow, the users always got the answer they were looking for. It might have taken a few extra turns with questions from the model, but the end result was the same.

It's humbling, but a flowery, carefully crafted prompt is at best slightly more efficient than a "CAN A DOG BE EATIN SUN FLOWER SEED?" peasant prompt.

Re: Claude Cookbook

#64

Post by mbreese »

I'm a bit disappointed. Based on the title, I was hoping this was going to be a list of popular recipes Claude has suggested for cooking food. It's one of the not-so-obvious use cases I have a Claude/ChatGPT. It's been really helpful for figuring out how to cook something new (for me). It is easy to ask "how do I cook X" when I have no idea of where to start. Claude has also been helpful when trying to figure out how to substitute different ingredients when I've forgotten something at the store. I've also gotten corrections in recipes, with Claude (correctly) identifying different issues that I didn't notice (like when Claude suggested adding more sugar to a sorbet too avoid having excess ice when freezing in a sorbet).

Re: Claude Cookbook

#65

Post by mellosouls »

killthebuddha wrote: post #32

Does anybody here have a frontend development workflow that works well with coding agents? In my experience coding agents ship buggy, broken, incomplete, or awkward frontend features at a way higher frequency than they do for backend features. The reason seems obviously to be the difference in verifiability between the two. Basic test suites dont seem to help much. I assume something like Garry Tan’s gstack is the ri…

There may be good options coupled with agents like Claudes Front End Design skill, I haven't used it.

I have been using Magic Patterns which is very good at generating initial prototypes, especially when driven by an agent familiar with it's facilities and constraints.

I assume the service is just a wrapper plus scaffolding but I like it. You have to push it though to get anything particularly creative but it's good at standard front end designs.

https://www.magicpatterns.com/

That's not necessarily what you're after because I only use it for piloting stuff, not for adhoc feature addition and fixes.

Re: Claude Cookbook

#66

Post by bingemaker »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #24
mindwok wrote: post #8

Gotta be honest, almost every "how to use AI" resource seems pointless to me. I'm either going to ask the AI how to do it, or if it's about using the AI then we can just bake it into the harness or wait for Anthropic/OpenAI to do it for me because they're always trivial. All of these resources on agentic workflows, managing agent memory, harness engineering, etc. appear to just be theatre to me.

Remember in 2023 when people thought "prompt engineering" would be the new software engineering and invested tons of time into learning CoT, ReAct, thread-of-thoughts, etc? Those were mostly obviated by reasoning models and harness updates by 2024. It seems pointless to invest energy into the latest/greatest AI technique or framework when they're going to either be absorbed or replaced on a 3 month cycle.

I still believe in writing good prompts or good instructions. Bad prompts can sometimes blow up the bill. A poorly written spec can waste a lot of tokens

Re: Claude Cookbook

#67

Post by lukan »

bingemaker wrote: post #66
cloakandswagger wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember in 2023 when people thought "prompt engineering" would be the new software engineering and invested tons of time into learning CoT, ReAct, thread-of-thoughts, etc? Those were mostly obviated by reasoning models and harness updates by 2024. It seems pointless to invest energy into the latest/greatest AI technique or framework when they're going to either be absorbed or replaced on a 3 month cycle.

I still believe in writing good prompts or good instructions. Bad prompts can sometimes blow up the bill. A poorly written spec can waste a lot of tokens

Definitely. But the special knowledge how to talk to a certain model is usually not worth it.

Being able to write clear, always is.

Re: Claude Cookbook

#68

Post by bad_username »

mindwok wrote: post #8

Gotta be honest, almost every "how to use AI" resource seems pointless to me. I'm either going to ask the AI how to do it, or if it's about using the AI then we can just bake it into the harness or wait for Anthropic/OpenAI to do it for me because they're always trivial. All of these resources on agentic workflows, managing agent memory, harness engineering, etc. appear to just be theatre to me.

> I'm either going to ask the AI how to do it

First you have to know that "it" exists and is possible. A cookbook like this introduces readers to concepts and features they didn't know were there in the first place.

Re: Claude Cookbook

#69

Post by thunky »

bingemaker wrote: post #66
cloakandswagger wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember in 2023 when people thought "prompt engineering" would be the new software engineering and invested tons of time into learning CoT, ReAct, thread-of-thoughts, etc? Those were mostly obviated by reasoning models and harness updates by 2024. It seems pointless to invest energy into the latest/greatest AI technique or framework when they're going to either be absorbed or replaced on a 3 month cycle.

I still believe in writing good prompts or good instructions. Bad prompts can sometimes blow up the bill. A poorly written spec can waste a lot of tokens

Sure but lets not pretend this is engineering.
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