[agrippanux]

From the article:

> What I found interesting is how it forced me to think differently about the development process itself. Instead of jumping straight into code, I found myself spending more time articulating what I actually wanted to build and high level software architectural choices.

This is what I already do with Claude Code. Case in point, I spent 2.5 hours yesterday planning a new feature - first working with an agent to build out the plan, then 4 cycles of having that agent spit out a prompt for another agent to critique the plan and integrate the feedback.

In the end, once I got a clean bill of health on the plan from the “crusty-senior-architect” agent, I had Claude build it - took 12 minutes.

Two passes of the senior-architect and crusty-senior-architect debating how good the code quality was / fixing a few minor issues and the exercise was complete. The new feature worked flawlessly. It took a shade over 3 hours to implement what would have taken me 2 days by myself.

I have been doing this workflow a while, but Claude Code released Agents yesterday (/agents) and I highly recommend them. You can define an agent on the basis of another agent, so crusty-architect is a clone of my senior-architect but it’s never happy unless code was super simple, maintainable, and uses well established patterns. The debates between the two remind me of sitting in conf rooms hashing an issue out with a good team.

[pjm331]

I love how I am learning about a new claude code feature in a comment on HN - nowhere to be found on their release notes https://docs.anthropic.com/en/release-notes/claude-code

Thanks for the tip!

I've been attempting to do this kind of thing manually w/ mcp - took a look at "claude swarm" https://github.com/parruda/claude-swarm - but in the short time I spent on it I wasn't having much success - admittedly I probably went a little too far into the "build an entire org chart of agents" territory

[EDIT]: looks like I should be paying attention to the changelog on the gh repo instead of the release notes

https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/blob/main/CHANGELO...

[EDIT 2]: so far this seems to suffer from the same problem I had in my own attempts which is that I need to specifically tell it to use an agent when I would really like it to just figure that out on its own

like if I created an agent called "code-reviewer" and then I say - "review this code" ... use the agent!

[shostack]

Roo Code has had Orchestrator mode doing this for a while with your models of choice. And you can tweak the modes or add new ones.

What I have noticed is the forcing function of needing to think through technical and business considerations of ones work up front, which can be tedious if you are the type that likes to jump in and hack at it.

For many types of coding needs, that is likely the smarter and ultimately more efficient approach. Measure twice, cut once.

What I have not yet figured out is how to reduce the friction in the UX of that process to make it more enjoyable. Perhaps sprinkling in some dopamine triggering gamification to answering questions.

[gooosle]

You planned and wrote a feature yesterday that would have taken yourself 2 whole days? And you already got it reviewed and deployed it and know that 'it works flawlessly'?

....

That reminds me of when my manager (a very smart, very AI-bullish ex-IC) told us about how he used AI to implement a feature over the weekend and all it took him was 20 mins. It sounds absolutely magical to me and I make a note to use AI more. I then go to review the PR, and of course there are multiple bugs and unintended side-effects in the code. Oh and there are like 8 commits spread over a 60 hour window... I manually spin up a PR which accomplishes the same thing properly... takes me 30mins.

[fcarraldo]

This sounds like a positive outcome? A manager built a proof-of-concept of a feature that clearly laid out and fulfilled the basic requirements, and an engineer took 30 mins to rewrite it once it's been specified.

How long does it typically take to spec something out? I'd say more than 20 mins, and typical artifacts to define requirements are much lossier than actual code - even if that code is buggy and sloppy.

[gooosle]

Not at all.

What was claimed was that a complete feature was built in record time with AI. What was actually built was a useless and buggy piece of junk that wasted reviewer time and was ultimately thrown out, and it took far longer than claimed.

There were no useful insights or speed up coming out of this code. I implemented the feature from scratch in 30 mins - because it was actually quite easy to do manually (<100 loc).

[mym1990]

This seems more of a process problem than a tooling problem. Without specs on what the feature was, I would be inclined to say you manager had a lapse in his "smartness", there was a lot of miscommunication on what was happening, or you are being overly critical over something that "wasted 30 minutes of your time". Additionally, this seems like a crapshoot work environment...there seems to be resentment for the manager using AI to build a feature that had bugs/didn't work...whereas ideally you two sit down and talk it out and see how it could be managed better next time?

[gooosle]

Not at all, there is no resentment - that's your imagination. There is nothing about what I described that indicates that it's a bad work environment - I quite like it.

You're bringing up various completely unrelated factors seemingly as a way of avoiding the obvious point of the anecdotal story - that AI for coding just isn't that great (yet).

[vitorbaptistaa]

Would you mind sharing the prompts you use for your subagents? It sounds very interesting!

[ofrzeta]

How exactly to you "create an agent" with the personalities you are talking about?

[therealbilliam]

/agents

[ofrzeta]

The parent commenter had agents with personalities before the release of the agents feature in Claude Code, that's why I was asking.

[sunnybeetroot]

Prompt it to behave in a certain way?