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Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

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Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#291

Post by ComplexSystems »

mafriese wrote: post #138

Ok it might sound crazy but I actually got the best quality of code (completely ignoring that the cost is likely 10x more) by having a full “project team” using opencode with multiple sub agents which are all managed by a single Opus instance. I gave them the task to port a legacy Java server to C# .NET 10. 9 agents, 7-stage Kanban with isolated Git Worktrees. Manager (Claude Opus 4.5): Global event loop that wakes u…

How much does this setup cost? I don't think a regular Claude Max subscription makes this possible.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#293

Post by tripledry »

overfeed wrote: post #176
mafriese wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope it isn’t. I did it as a joke initially (I also had a version where every 2 stories there was a meeting and if a someone underperformed it would get fired). I think there are multiple reasons why it actually works so well: - I built a system where context (+ the current state + goal) is properly structured and coding agents only get the information they actually need and nothing more. You wouldn’t let your produc…

> [...]coding agents only get the information they actually need and nothing more Extrapolating from this concept led me to a hot-take I haven't had time to blog about: Agentic AI will revive the popularity of microservices. Mostly due to the deleterious effect of context size on agent performance.

In a fresh project that is well documented and set up it might work better. Many issues that Agents have in my work is that the endpoints are not always documented correctly.

Real example that happened to me, Agent forgets to rename an expected parameter in API spec for service 1. Now when working on service 2, there is no other way of finding this mistake for the Agent than to give it access to service 1. And now you are back to "... effect of context size on agent performance ...". For context, we might have ~100 services.

One could argue these issues reduce over time as instruction files are updated etc but that also assumes the models follow instructions and don't hallucinate.

That being said, I do use Agents quite successfully now - but I have to guide them a bit more than some care to admit.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#294

Post by uxhacker »

joshuaisaact wrote: post #279
miki123211 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's just the opposite, as LLMs feed on human language. "You are a scrum master." Automatically encodes most of what the LLM needs to know. Trying to describe the same role in a prompt would be a lot more difficult. Maybe a different separation of roles would be more efficient in theory, but an LLM understands "you are a scrum master" from the get go, while "you are a zhydgry bhnklorts" needs explanation.

This has been pretty comprehensively disproven: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.10054 Key findings: -Tested 162 personas across 6 types of interpersonal relationships and 8 domains of expertise, with 4 LLM families and 2,410 factual questions -Adding personas in system prompts does not improve model performance compared to the control setting where no persona is added -Automatically identifying the best persona is challen…

Persona’s is not the same thing as a role. The point of the role is to limit what the work of the agent, and to focus it on one or two behaviors.

What the paper is really addressing is does key words like you are a helpful assistant give better results.

The paper is not addressing a role such as you are system designer, or you are security engineer which will produce completely different results and focus the results of the LLM.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#295

Post by squirrellous »

czhu12 wrote: post #66

The problem I’ve been having is that when Claude generates copious amounts of code, it makes it way harder to review than small snippets one at a time. Some would argue there’s no point reviewing the code, just test the implementation and if it works, it works. I still am kind of nervous doing this in critical projects. Anyone just YOLO code for projects that’s not meant to be one time, but fully intend to have to be…

Not a direct answer to your question, but I’m recently trying to adopt the mindset of letting Claude “prove” to me with very high confidence that what they did works. The bar for this would be much higher than what I’d require for a human engineer. For example it can be near 100% test coverage, combined with advanced testing techniques like property-based tests and fuzz tests, and benchmarks if performance is a concern. I’d still have to skim through both the implementation and tests, but it doesn’t have to be a line by line review. This also forces me to establish a verifiable success criteria which is quite useful.

Results will vary depending on how automatically checkable a problem is, but I expect a lot of problems are amenable to some variation of this.

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#297

Post by ionwake »

lupire wrote: post #221
ionwake wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Are you sure that yours would sell for $80K, if you aren't using it to launder money with your criminal associates?

If the price floor is 80k and there are thousands then it means that even if just one was legit it would sell for 80k

Weird Im getting downvoted for just stating facts again

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#298

Post by dist-epoch »

joshuaisaact wrote: post #279
miki123211 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's just the opposite, as LLMs feed on human language. "You are a scrum master." Automatically encodes most of what the LLM needs to know. Trying to describe the same role in a prompt would be a lot more difficult. Maybe a different separation of roles would be more efficient in theory, but an LLM understands "you are a scrum master" from the get go, while "you are a zhydgry bhnklorts" needs explanation.

This has been pretty comprehensively disproven: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.10054 Key findings: -Tested 162 personas across 6 types of interpersonal relationships and 8 domains of expertise, with 4 LLM families and 2,410 factual questions -Adding personas in system prompts does not improve model performance compared to the control setting where no persona is added -Automatically identifying the best persona is challen…

In a discussion about LLMs you link to a paper from 2023, when not even GPT-4 was available?

And then you say:

> comprehensively disproven

? I don't think you understand the scientific method

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#299

Post by flurdy »

This smells like Claude's own version of Gas Town by Steve Yegge. Probably more constrained and less of a crazy bull ride.

But seems we are heading this way, from initially:

- a Senior Dev pairing with Junior Dev (2024/25)

- a tech lead/architect in charge of several Developers (2025)

- a Product Owner delegating to development teams (2026?)

---

- https://github.com/steveyegge/gastown

- https://steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-gas-town-4f25ee16d...

Re: Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

#300

Post by stingraycharles »

ElFitz wrote: post #275
stingraycharles wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m trying to solve this myself by implementing a whole planner workflow at https://github.com/solatis/claude-config Effectively it tries to resolve all ambiguities by making all decisions explicit — if the source cannot be resolved to documentation or anything, it’s asked to the user. It also tries to capture all “invisible knowledge” by documenting everything, so that all these decisions and business context are ca…

Have you tried the compound engineering plugin? [^1] My workflow with it is usually brainstorm -> lfg (planning) -> clear context -> lfg (giving it the produced plan to work on) -> compound if it didn’t on its own. [^1]: https://github.com/EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin

That’s super interesting, I’ll take a look to see if I can learn something from it, as I’m not familiar with the concept of compound engineering.

Seems like a lot of it aligns with what I’m doing, though.

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