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Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

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Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#481

Post by ec109685 »

sdesol wrote: post #159
handfuloflight wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you should look at it, because it's not going through all files. I looked at your product and the workflow is essentially asking me to do manually what Claude Code does auto. Granted, manually selecting the context will probably lead to lower costs in any case because Claude Code invokes tool calls like grep to do its search, so I do see merit in your product in that respect.

Looking at the code, it does have some sort of automatic discovery. I also don't know how scalable Claude Code is. I've spent over a decade thinking about code search, so I know what the limitations are for enterprise code. One of the neat tricks that I've developed is, I would load all my backend code for my search component and then I would ask the LLM to trace a query and create a context bundle for only the files…

It greps around the code like an intern would. You have to have patience and be willing to document workflows and correct when it gets things wrong via CLAUDE.md files.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#482

Post by brulard »

imiric wrote: post #422
brulard wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it was like this for like a year (using Cline + Sonnet & Gemini) until Claude Code came out and until I learned how to keep context real clean. The key breakthrough was treating AI as an architect/implementer rather than a code generator. Most recently I ask first CC to create a design document for what we are going to do. He has instructions to look into the relevant parts of the code and docs to reference th…

This is a common workflow that most advanced users are familiar with. Yet even following it to a T, and being really careful with how you manage context, the LLM will still hallucinate, generate non-working code, steer you into wrong directions and dead ends, and just waste your time in most scenarios. There's no magical workflow or workaround for avoiding this. These issues are inherent to the technology, and have b…

> These issues are inherent to the technology

That's simply false. Even if LLMs don't produce correct and valid code on first shot 100% times of the cases, if you use an agent, it's simply a matter of iterations. I have claude code connected to Playwright, context7 for docs and to Playwright, so it can iterate by itself if there are syntax errors, runtime errors or problems with the data on the backend side. Currently I have near zero cases when it does not produce valid working code. If it is incorrect in some aspect, it is then not that hard to steer it to better solution or to fix yourself.

And even if it failed in implementing most of these stages of the plan, it's not all wasted time. I brainstormed ideas, formed the requirements, specifications to features and have clear documentation and plan of the implementation, unit tests, etc. and I can use it to code it myself. So even in the worst case scenario my development workflow is improved.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#483

Post by mathiaspoint »

brulard wrote: post #482
imiric wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common workflow that most advanced users are familiar with. Yet even following it to a T, and being really careful with how you manage context, the LLM will still hallucinate, generate non-working code, steer you into wrong directions and dead ends, and just waste your time in most scenarios. There's no magical workflow or workaround for avoiding this. These issues are inherent to the technology, and have b…

> These issues are inherent to the technology That's simply false. Even if LLMs don't produce correct and valid code on first shot 100% times of the cases, if you use an agent, it's simply a matter of iterations. I have claude code connected to Playwright, context7 for docs and to Playwright, so it can iterate by itself if there are syntax errors, runtime errors or problems with the data on the backend side. Currentl…

It definitely isn't. LLMs often end up stuck in weird corners they just don't get and need someone familiar with the theory of what they're working on to unstick them. If the agent is the same model as the code generator it won't be able to on its own.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#484

Post by epolanski »

cambaceres wrote: post #76
benterix wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not clear if the value actually exists here. Having spent a couple of weeks on Claude Code recently, I arrived to the conclusion that the net value for me from agentic AI is actually negative. I will give it another run in 6-8 months though.

For me it’s meant a huge increase in productivity, at least 3X. Since so many claim the opposite, I’m curious to what you do more specifically? I guess different roles/technologies benefit more from agents than others. I build full stack web applications in node/.net/react, more importantly (I think) is that I work on a small startup and manage 3 applications myself.

> Since so many claim the opposite

The overwhelming majority of those claiming the opposite are a mixture of:

- users with wrong expectations, such as AI's ability to do the job on its own with minimal effort from the user. They have marketers to blame.

- users that have AI skill issues: they simply don't understand/know how to use the tools appropriately. I could provide countless examples from the importance of quality prompting, good guidelines, context management, and many others. They have only their laziness or lack of interest to blame.

- users that are very defensive about their job/skills. Many feel threatened by AI taking their jobs or diminishing it, so their default stance is negative. They have their ego to blame.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#485

Post by epolanski »

wiremine wrote: post #130
cambaceres wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it’s meant a huge increase in productivity, at least 3X. Since so many claim the opposite, I’m curious to what you do more specifically? I guess different roles/technologies benefit more from agents than others. I build full stack web applications in node/.net/react, more importantly (I think) is that I work on a small startup and manage 3 applications myself.

> Having spent a couple of weeks on Claude Code recently, I arrived to the conclusion that the net value for me from agentic AI is actually negative. > For me it’s meant a huge increase in productivity, at least 3X. How do we reconcile these two comments? I think that's a core question of the industry right now. My take, as a CTO, is this: we're giving people new tools, and very little training on the techniques that…

This is a very sensible point.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#487

Post by epolanski »

ath3nd wrote: post #285
dennisy wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also another view is that developers below a certain level get a positive benefit and those above get a negative effect. This makes sense, as the models are an average of the code out there and some of us are above and below that average. Sorry btw I do not want to offend anyone who feels they do garner a benefit from LLMs, just wanted to drop in this idea!

That's my anecdotal experience as well! Junior devs struggle with a lot of things: - syntax - iteration over an idea - breaking down the task and verifying each step Working with a tool like Claude that gets them started quick and iterate the solution together with them helps them tremendously and educate them on best practices in the field. Contrast that with a seasoned developer with a domain experience, good comma…

> that experienced developers' performance suffered when using an LLM

That experiment is really non significant. A bunch of OSS devs without much training in the tools used them for very little time and found it to be a net negative.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#488

Post by epolanski »

hirako2000 wrote: post #309
unoti wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having spent a couple of weeks on Claude Code recently, I arrived to the conclusion that the net value for me from agentic AI is actually negative. > For me it’s meant a huge increase in productivity, at least 3X. > How do we reconcile these two comments? I think that's a core question of the industry right now. Every success story with AI coding involves giving the agent enough context to succeed on a task that it…

Bold claims. From my experience, even the top models continue to fail delivering correctness on many tasks even with all the details and no ambiguity in the input. In particular when details are provided, in fact. I find that with solutions likely to be well oiled in the training data, a well formulated set of *basic* requirements often leads to a zero shot, "a" perfectly valid solution. I say "a" solution because th…

> From my experience, even the top models continue to fail delivering correctness on many tasks even with all the details and no ambiguity in the input.

Please provide the examples, both of the problem and your input so we can double check.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#490

Post by sixothree »

lucasfdacunha wrote: post #336
sixothree wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Serena MCP to keep my context smaller. It seems to be working because claude uses it pretty much exclusively to search the codebase.

Could you elaborate a bit on how that works? Does it need any changes in how you use Claude?

No. I have three MCPs installed and this is the only one that doesn’t need guidance. You’ll see it using it for search and finding references and such. It’s a one line install and no work to maintain.

The advantage is that Claude won’t have to use the file system to find files. And it won’t have to go read files into context to find what it’s looking for. It can use its context for the parts of code that actually matter.

And I feel like my results have actually been much better with this.

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