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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

#221

Yet https://marginlab.ai/trackers/claude-code/ says no issue. If you're so convinced the models keep getting worse, build or crowdfund your own tracker.

Came here to post this as well, and it's interesting to see how benchmarks don't always track feelings. Which is one of the things people say in favor of Anthropic Models!

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

#222
I think its all a reflection of the price. To make AI/LLM's useful you have to burn A LOT of tokens. Way more than people are willing to pay for.

Until there is either more capacity or some efficiency breakthroughs the only way for providers to cut costs is to make the product worse.

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

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's been more going on than just the default to medium level thinking - I'll echo what others are saying, even on high effort there's been a very significant increase in "rush to completion" behavior.

Thanks for the feedback. To make it actionable, would you mind running /bug the next time you see it and posting the feedback id here? That way we can debug and see if there's an issue, or if it's within variance.

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

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

#224

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…

> This beta header hides thinking from the UI, since most people don't look at it.

I look at it, and I am very upset that I no longer see it.

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

#225
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you guys manage regressions as a whole with every new model update? A massive test set of e2e problem solving seeing how the models compare?

A mix of evals and vibes.

What's that ratio exactly

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

#226

Not claude code specific, but I've been noticing this on Opus 4.6 models through Copilot and others as well. Whenever the phrase "simplest fix" appears, it's time to pull the emergency break. This has gotten much, much worse over the past few weeks. It will produce completely useless code, knowingly (because up to that phrase the reasoning was correct) breaking things. Today another thing started happening which are…

The cope is hard. Just at this point admit that the LLM tech is doomed and sucks.

But it was clearly really food before the regression, the original link (analysis) says as much.

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

#227

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 wanted to say I appreciate the depth of thinking & care that went into this.

The irony lol. The whole ticket is just AI-generated. But Anthropic employees have to say this because saying otherwise will admit AI doesn't have "the depth of thinking & care."

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

#228
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed a strong degradation as its started doing more skill like things and writing more one off python scripts rather than using tools. the agent has a set of scripts that are well tested, but instead it chooses to write a new bespoke script everytime it needs to do something, and as a result writes both the same bugs over and over again, and also unique new bugs every time as well.

I'm going absolutely insane with this. Nearly all of my "agent engineering" effort is now figuring out how to keep Opus from YOLO'ing is own implementation of everything. I've lost track of the number of times it's started a task by building it's own tools, I remind it that it has a tool for doing that exact task, then it proceeds to build it's own tools anyways. This wasn't happening 2 months ago.

Can you just tell it not to do that? Maybe you have to remind it every so often once context starts filling up.

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

#229
post #64

Called it 10 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47533297#47540633 Something worse than a bad model is an inconsistent model. One can't gauge to what extent to trust the output, even for the simplest instructions, hence everything must be reviewed with intensity which is exhausting. I jumped on Max because it was worth it but I guess I'll have to cancel this garbage.

With Claude Code the problem of changes outside of your view is twofold: you don't have any insight into how the model is being ran behind the scenes, nor do you get to control the harness. Your best hope is to downgrade CC to a version you think worked better.

I don't see how this can be the future of software engineering when we have to put all our eggs in Anthropic's basket.

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