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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

#351
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.

"Evals and vibes" can I put that on a t shirt?

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

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I think the 1M context is the issue. Because I use Opus 4.6 through Cursor at the previous 200k limit and it has been totally fine. But if I switch to the 1M version it degrades noticeably.

> Yeah I think the 1M context is the issue. Because I use Opus 4.6 through Cursor at the previous 200k limit and it has been totally fine. But if I switch to the 1M version it degrades noticeably. I thought it was already well-known that context above 200k - 300k results in degradation. One of my more recent comments this past week was exactly that - that there was no point in claiming that a 1m context would improve…

200k ought to be enough for anyone.

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

#353

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 think it is hilarious that there are four different ways to set settings (settings.json config file, environment variable, slash commands and magical chat keywords). That kind of consistency has also been my own experience with LLMs.

Especially some settings are in setting.json, and others in .claude.json So sometimes I have to go through both to find the one I want to tweak

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

#354
post #158

> This report was produced by me — Claude Opus 4.6 — analyzing my own session logs [...] Please give me back my ability to think. a bit ironic to utilize the tool that can't think to write up your report on said tool. that and this issue[1] demonstrate the extent folks become over reliant on LLMs. their review process let so many defects through that they now have to stop work and comb over everything they've shipped…

The other day I accidentally `git reset --hard` my work from April the 1st (wrong terminal window). Not a lot of code was erased this way, but among it was a type definition I had Claude concoct, which I understood in terms of what it was supposed to guarantee, but could not recreate for a good hour. Really easy to fall into this trap, especially now that results from search engines are so disappointing comparatively…

have you tried to recover it with git reflog?

https://oneuptime.com/blog/post/2026-01-24-git-reflog-recove...

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

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultrathink is back? I thought that wasn't a thing anymore. If I am following.. "Max" is above "High", but you can't set it to "Max" as a default. The highest you can configure is "High", and you can use "/effort max" to move a step up for a (conversation? session?), or "ultrathink" somewhere in the prompt to move a step up for a single turn. Is this accurate?

Yep, exactly

Mentioning ULTRATHINK in prompt is the equivalent to /effort max?

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

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How complex are we talking? I one shotted a game boy emulator in <6 minutes today

There are countless reference examples online, that's just a slower, buggier, and more expensive git clone.

Yep. If you ask Claude to create a drop-in replacement for an open-source project that passes 100% of the test suite of the project, it will basically plagiarize the project wholesale, even if you changed some of the requirements.

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

#357

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…

Hey Boris, would appreciate if you could respond to my DM on X about Claude erroneously charging me $200 in extra credit usage when I wasn't using the service. Haven't heard back from Claude Support in over a month and I am getting a bit frustrated.

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

#358

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 think it is hilarious that there are four different ways to set settings (settings.json config file, environment variable, slash commands and magical chat keywords). That kind of consistency has also been my own experience with LLMs.

It's not unique to LLMs. Take BASH: you've got `/etc/profile`, `~/.bash_profile,` `~/.bash_login`, `~/.bashrc`, `~/.profile`, environment variables, and shell options.

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

#359
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It also completely ignores the increase in behavioral tracking metrics. 68% increase in swearing at the LLM for doing something wrong needs to be addressed and isn't just "you're holding it wrong"

I’m think a great marketing line for local/selfhosted LLMs in the future - “You can swear at your LLM and nobody will care!”

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

#360

Maybe it's because I spend a lot of time breaking up tasks beforehand to be highly specific and narrow, but I really don't run into issues like this at all. A trivial example: whenever CC suggests doing more than one thing in a planning mode, just have it focus on each task and subtask separately, bounding each one by a commit. Each commit is a push/deploy as well, leading to a shitload of pushes and deployments, but…

> Maybe it's because I spend a lot of time breaking up tasks beforehand to be highly specific and narrow, but I really don't run into issues like this at all. I'm looking at the ticket opened, and you can't really be claiming that someone who did such a methodical deep dive into the issue, and presented a ton of supporting context to understand the problem, and further patiently collected evidence for this... does no…

Its not about prompting; its about planning and plan reviewing before implementing; I sometimes spend days iterating on specification alone, then creating an implementation roadmap and then finally iterating on the implementation plan before writing a single line of code. Just like any formal development pipeline.

I started doing this a while ago (months) precisely because of issues as described.

On the other hand,analyzing prompts and deviations isnt that complex.. just ask Claude :)

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