Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far • Hacker News Board

Re: Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

#861

Post by kaydub » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 6:06 PM UTC

roadside_picnic wrote: post #240

littlestymaar wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really think a lof of people tried AI coding earlier, got frustrated at the errors and gave up. That's where the rejection of all these doomer predictions comes from. It's not just the deficiencies of earlier versions, but the mismatch between the praise from AI enthusiasts and the reality. I mean maybe it is really different now and I should definitely try uploading all of my employer's IP on Claude's cloud and…

I feel similar, I'm not against the idea that maybe LLMs have gotten so much better... but I've been told this probably 10 times in the last few years working with AI daily. The funny part about rapidly changing industries is that, despite the fomo, there's honestly not any reward to keeping up unless you want to be a consultant. Otherwise, wait and see what sticks. If this summer people are still citing the Opus 4.5…

> The funny part about rapidly changing industries is that, despite the fomo, there's honestly not any reward to keeping up unless you want to be a consultant.

LMAO what???

Re: Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

#862

Post by thesabreslicer » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 6:08 PM UTC

ben-gy wrote: post #695

I second this article - I built twelve iOS/Mac apps in two weeks with Opus 4.5 - four of them are already in the App Store - I’m a Rails Engineer and never had the time to learn Swift but man does Opus 4.5 make that not even matter - it even handles entitlements, logo & splash screen generation, refactors to remove dead code, edge case assent and hardening, Multiplatform app design, and more - I’m yet to run into a u…

how did you use Opus to build the apps? I tried using Claude Code ~6 months ago to build an iOS app and I was not that impressed with the results, especially compared to this blog post, where the apps look polished and very professional.

My biggest issue was limitations around how Claude Code could change Xcode settings and verify design elements in the simulator.

Re: Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

#863

Post by pluralmonad » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 6:09 PM UTC

everfrustrated wrote: post #357

ern wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been out of the loop for a couple of months (vacation). I tried Claude Opus 4.5 at the end of November 2025 with the corporate Github Copilot subscription in Agent mode and it was awful: basically ignoring code and hallucinating. My team is using it with Claude Code and say it works brilliantly, so I'll be giving it another go. How much of the value comes from Opus 4.5, how much comes from Claude Code, and how…

As someone coming from GitHub copilot in vscode and recently trying Claude Code plugin for vscode I don't get the fuss about Claude. Copilot has by far the best and most intuitive agent UI. Just make sure you're in agent mode and choose Sonnet or Opus models. I've just cancelled my Claude sub and gone back and will upgrade to the GH Pro+ to get more sonnet/opus.

I strongly concur with your second statement. Anything other than agent mode in GH copilot feels useless to me. If I want to engage Opus through GH copilot for planning work, I still use agent mode and just indicate the desired output is whatever.md. I obviously only do this in environments lacking a better tool (Claude Code).

Re: Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

#864

Post by FuriouslyAdrift » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 6:09 PM UTC

vladsh wrote: post #755

It’s a bit strange how anecdotes have become acceptable fuel for 1000 comment technical debates. I’ve always liked the quote that sufficiently advanced tech looks like magic, but its mistake to assume that things that look like magic also share other properties of magic. They don’t. Software engineering spans over several distinct skills: forming logical plans, encoding them in machine executable form(coding), making…

LLMs are lossy compression of a corpus with a really good parser as a front end. As human made content dries up (due to LLM use), the AI products will plateau.

I see inference as the much bigger technology although much better RAG loops for local customization could be a very lucrative product for a few years.

Re: Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

#865

Post by kaydub » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 6:09 PM UTC

vercaemert wrote: post #106

enum wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I teach at a university, and spend plenty of time programming for research and for fun. Like many others, I spent some time on the holidays trying to push the current generation of Cursor, Claude Code, and Codex as far as I could. (They're all very good.) I had an idea for something that I wanted, and in five scattered hours, I got it good enough to use. I'm thinking about it in a few different ways: 1. I estimate I…

How do you compare Claude Code to Cursor? I'm a Cursor user quietly watching the CC parade with curiosity. Personally, I haven't been able to give up the IDE experience.

Im so sold on the cli tools that I think IDEs are basically dead to me. I only have an IDE open so I can read the code, but most often I'm just changing configs (like switching a bool, or bumping up a limit or something like that).

Seriously, I have 3+ claude code windows open at a time. Most days I don't even look at the IDE. It's still there running in the background, but I don't need to touch it.

Re: Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

#866

Post by thesabreslicer » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 6:10 PM UTC

hollandburke wrote: post #843

Author of the post here. I appreciate the spirited debate and I agree with most of it - on both sides. It's a strange place to be where I think both arguments for and against this case make perfect sense. All I have to go on then is my personal experience, which is the only objective thing I've got. This entire profession feels stochastic these days. A few points of clarification... 1. I don't speak for anyone but my…

I would be really interested to learn more behind the scenes of the iOS app process. Having tried Claude Code to develop an iOS app ~6 months ago, it was pretty painful to get it to make something that looked good and was functional.

Once Opus "finished", how did you validate and give it feedback it might not have access to (like iPhone simulator testing)?

Re: Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

#867

Post by parliament32 » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 6:11 PM UTC

JDye wrote: post #813

klaussilveira wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a similar comment on a different thread, but I think it also fits here: I think the disconnect between engineers is due to their own context. If you work with frontend applications, specially React/React Native/HTML/Mobile, your experience with LLMs is completely different than the experience of someone working with OpenGL, io_uring, libev and other lower level stuff. Sure, Opus 4.5 can one shot Windows utilit…

We have an in-house, Rust-based proxy server. Claude is unable to contribute to it meaningfully outside of grunt work like minor refactors across many files. It doesn't seem to understand proxying and how it works on both a protocol level and business logic level. With some entirely novel work we're doing, it's actually a hindrance as it consistently tells us the approach isn't valid/won't work (it will) and then ent…

> I still believe those who rave about it are not writing anything I would consider "engineering".

Correct. In fact, this is the entire reason for the disconnect, where it seems like half the people here think LLMs are the best thing ever and the other half are confused about where the value is in these slop generators.

The key difference is (despite everyone calling themselves an SWE nowadays) there's a difference between a "programmer" and an "engineer". Looking at OP, exactly zero of his screenshotted apps are what I would consider "engineering". Literally everything in there has been done over and over to the death. Engineering is.. novel, for lack of a better word.

Re: Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

#868

Post by kaydub » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 6:12 PM UTC

Yoric wrote: post #88

OldGreenYodaGPT wrote: post #33

Most software engineers are seriously sleeping on how good LLM agents are right now, especially something like Claude Code. Once you’ve got Claude Code set up, you can point it at your codebase, have it learn your conventions, pull in best practices, and refine everything until it’s basically operating like a super-powered teammate. The real unlock is building a solid set of reusable “skills” plus a few agents for th…

You intrigue me. > have it learn your conventions, pull in best practices What do you mean by "have it learn your conventions"? Is there a way to somehow automatically extract your conventions and store it within CLAUDE.md? > For example, we have a custom UI library, and Claude Code has a skill that explains exactly how to use it. Same for how we write Storybooks, how we structure APIs, and basically how we want ever…

"Claude, clone this repo https://github.com/repo, review the coding conventions, check out any markdown or readme files. This is an example of coding conventions we want to use on this project"

Re: Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

#869

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 6:13 PM UTC

klaussilveira wrote: post #325

OldGreenYodaGPT wrote: post #33

Most software engineers are seriously sleeping on how good LLM agents are right now, especially something like Claude Code. Once you’ve got Claude Code set up, you can point it at your codebase, have it learn your conventions, pull in best practices, and refine everything until it’s basically operating like a super-powered teammate. The real unlock is building a solid set of reusable “skills” plus a few agents for th…

I made a similar comment on a different thread, but I think it also fits here: I think the disconnect between engineers is due to their own context. If you work with frontend applications, specially React/React Native/HTML/Mobile, your experience with LLMs is completely different than the experience of someone working with OpenGL, io_uring, libev and other lower level stuff. Sure, Opus 4.5 can one shot Windows utilit…

I've found it to be pretty hit-or-miss with C++ in general, but it's really, REALLY bad at 3D graphics code. I've tried to use it to port an OpenGL project to SDL3_GPU, and it really struggled. It would confidently insist that the code it wrote worked, when all you had to do was run it and look at the output to see a blank screen.

Re: Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

#870

Post by kaydub » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 6:14 PM UTC

gingersnap wrote: post #97

Yoric wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You intrigue me. > have it learn your conventions, pull in best practices What do you mean by "have it learn your conventions"? Is there a way to somehow automatically extract your conventions and store it within CLAUDE.md? > For example, we have a custom UI library, and Claude Code has a skill that explains exactly how to use it. Same for how we write Storybooks, how we structure APIs, and basically how we want ever…

Starting to use Opus 4.5 I'm reduces instrutions in claude.md and just ask claude to look in the codebase to understand the patterns already in use. Going from prompts/docs to instead having code being the "truth". Show don't tell. I've found this patterns has made a huge leap with Opus 4.5.

I feel like I've been doing this since Sonnet 3.5 or Sonnet 4. I'll clone projects/modules/whatever into the working directory and tell claude to check it out. Voila, now it knows your standards and conventions.