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Claude Cookbook

platform.claude.com

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Re: Claude Cookbook

#111

Post by cousinbryce »

NichoPaolucci wrote: post #71
embedding-shape wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I actually think that good prompting MOSTLY comes from good writing skills in general. Being able to more clearly state things to an agent, knowing what pieces of context are entirely unnecessary and which are important, having a larger vocabulary helps too. Of course, there are other areas that can improve model output (Direction rather than open-ended assistance requests, using keywords + plugins that help, the "yo…

Well said. I’ve been trying to put my finger on this for a while. The interaction plane for an LLM is __all of human language__

Re: Claude Cookbook

#112

Post by mexicocitinluez »

boorang wrote: post #108
mexicocitinluez wrote: post #83

This is definitely controversial, but I think the best CLAUDE.MD is no CLAUDE.MD at all. Every time I found myself wanting to put information into that file, I asked myself "Why isn't this already obvious from the code itself?" I don't need to tell the agent my tech stack, what DB access library I'm using, the way in which I write my tests, etc. Why? Because it's all very clearly spelled out within the code itself. I…

I had to create some workarounds to avoid this bug where they include a "this might not be relevant" preamble to the CLAUDE.MD file: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/18560 - I ended up switching to Codex and it just straight up follows the AGENTS.MD instructions, it's nice to see. This is to say, Anthropic seems to be going down the path you are describing to make the CLAUDE.MD unnecessary. But I thin…

I shouldn't have been so hyperbolic. I do have some general statements about tone and not to go down follow-up question rabbit holes and when to push back or not to install dotnet while on WSL and just go through Windows. Anything that won't change based on day-to-day dev work.

Re: Claude Cookbook

#113

Post by exsss »

AntiqueFig wrote: post #5

I thought it would be a litteral cookbook on how to make plausible/feasible recipes with LLMs (we're not here yet sadly).

I've been using ChatGPT to learn how to cook, specifically Italian cuisine, and with a few bumps here and there it has been working surprisingly well.

Re: Claude Cookbook

#114

Post by cityofdelusion »

saberience wrote: post #76
defrost wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWiW > it's like thinking you can prompt Linus Torvalds into writing better C++ than he already can do. Linus Torvalds, the inventor (and beloved dictator) of Linux, has always been quite harsh about C++ and why he rejects it for Linux kernel development. He’s not just been very vocal about it, but also brought up some arguments against the use of C++ that are worth reviewing in detail. ~ https://medium.com/@jankamme…

I mean, the point stands. The models are beyond expert level in many areas at this point. Do you really believe that adding extra junk to your prompt is going to make the model write code better than it does already? Again, imagine going to Terrence Tao and "prompting" him to get better at Maths, do you think you can do it? What prompt would you give to him to make him produce better maths. Unless you're already a wo…

Models are not rational thinking brains, so the point is moot.

Extra prompt text isn’t to make the model smarter, it’s to pull attention towards what you want. “Do code review” is far different from “Make sure changes align with existing architecture” or “follow these enterprise standards XYZ”. The model just acts as an average of its training data, which may or may not align with your goals.

Re: Claude Cookbook

#115

Post by yellow_lead »

semiquaver wrote: post #94

The before and after images in “prompting for frontend aesthetics” are hilarious. Did no one look at these to make sure the skill actually improved the design? https://platform.claude.com/cookbook/coding-prompting-for-fr...

The "with aesthetics" sites look like early 2000s keygens. Just need some techno music now

Re: Claude Cookbook

#116

Post by mexicocitinluez »

rowanseymour wrote: post #96
mexicocitinluez wrote: post #83

This is definitely controversial, but I think the best CLAUDE.MD is no CLAUDE.MD at all. Every time I found myself wanting to put information into that file, I asked myself "Why isn't this already obvious from the code itself?" I don't need to tell the agent my tech stack, what DB access library I'm using, the way in which I write my tests, etc. Why? Because it's all very clearly spelled out within the code itself. I…

I think that's something that has changed in the last 6 months. It used to be standard practice to let Claude scan everything once and describe your repo in the CLAUDE.md - the logic being you don't want to do that every time for every prompt. But now I think the tooling has gotten so good at just grepping around your repos, and maintaining memory from previous sessions, that the best practice is only use CLAUDE.md f…

> the logic being you don't want to do that every time for every prompt

That's definitely a downside of a minimal MD and I could def be wasting tokens. I've tried to scope the tasks such that it won't feel the need to scan unnecessary files, but it's not bulletproof.

Re: Claude Cookbook

#117

Post by iblaine »

semiquaver wrote: post #94

The before and after images in “prompting for frontend aesthetics” are hilarious. Did no one look at these to make sure the skill actually improved the design? https://platform.claude.com/cookbook/coding-prompting-for-fr...

Is the before/after backwards?

Re: Claude Cookbook

#118

Post by saejox »

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #83

This is definitely controversial, but I think the best CLAUDE.MD is no CLAUDE.MD at all. Every time I found myself wanting to put information into that file, I asked myself "Why isn't this already obvious from the code itself?" I don't need to tell the agent my tech stack, what DB access library I'm using, the way in which I write my tests, etc. Why? Because it's all very clearly spelled out within the code itself. I…

if i don't write "use podman instead of docker" it will go on journey to install docker. so there is some use for it.

Re: Claude Cookbook

#119

Post by enobrev »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #26
simonw wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been cooking with the help of LLMs a few times a month for over a year now. It's worked out well 9/10 times. It turns out the "average" version of a recipe that's baked into the weights is usually a solid recipe, and they're really good at offering substitutions for things like "I don't have ingredient X" or "make it vegetarian". It's also fun promoting "make it tastier" once or twice after each recipe just to s…

One of the most satisfying and useful applications for AI is handing it the URL for a recipe (replete with 8 paragraphs of useless introductory text, 2 paragraphs dedicated to how to refrigerate the meal, 9 inline advertisements and a mid-scroll ad) and having it return the actual recipe in Markdown in an Obsidian folder.

I've been maintaining a personal calorie tracker (keeps me entering), and using claude for entering meals has been the perfect experience.

One of my favorite features has been giving a recipe url and having it figure out the calories for that recipe with line-by-line entries for each ingredient. Then it keeps the extracted recipe in markdown format for the next time I want to make it.

Substitutions are also great - "I'm making [such and such recipe], but with half the sugar."

One of the others has been "I had a meal a couple weeks ago at [x restaurant], can you enter that again for right now?" Having the long-term context for entry has been excellent. And a related one, where I upload a photo of the menu, and say which menu items I'm eating and it puts together an estimate for the calorie count.

I lean heavily on a long auto-compacting claude code session for all of this. I have a UI for graphs, history, and simple entries, but claude's been my favorite means of entry by far

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