I've had Claude tell me that I've reached the maximum messages for a session, which was painful.
Having said that it was a good circuit breaker, Claude was stuck on three wrong solutions to an issue, and having to re explain it meant that I realised what the bug was without further input from Claude
edit: FTR where Claude was stuck (and where it helped me)
First, I have a TUI application, written in Go, that is using https://github.com/rivo/tview - I chose tview basically at random, having no background in any of the TUI libraries available, but tview looked like it was easy to understand.
I had written some of the code, but it wasn't doing what I wanted of it. I had gotten Gemini to help me, but it still wasn't doing what I wanted.
Claude first suggested that the application needed to be refactored to make it into an Event Driven MVC TUI app, which I absolutely agreed with.
Claude counselled me on my understanding of the Run() command, and how it was a blocking call (which I hadn't realised). The refactor/re-architecture fixed the way things were being run a great deal.
However I still had a bug that I could not fix, and Claude was equally stumped (as was Gemini)
When I clicked on any of the components in a flex row, the first component behaved as though it was the one that was clicked. When I clicked on any of the components in another flex row the last one behaved as though it was the one that had been clicked.
Claude repeatedly told me that the problem was that the closure that used the index of components (inside a loop) was the problem.
This was outright wrong because
1. That bug has been fixed in Go.
2. The code I was sharing with Claude had the "fix" of local := index - meaning that the local version should have been correct
3. I repeatedly showed Claude logs (that it suggested I create) that showed that ALL of the components were in fact receiving the click event.
The second solution that Claude was fixated on was that th components overlapped one another inside the flex box.
This was partially incorrect.
I told Claude that I could visually see that the components weren't overlapping.
I also told Claude that there were borders around each component that clearly weren't overlapping.
I gave Claude debug logs that showed that the mouse click co-ordinates were inside a single component.
The third issue that Claude claimed was the problem was a click propagation bug in the library.
Claude repeated these claims several times, despite me showing that it wasn't either of the first two things, and I could not find a bug/issue for the third.
The circuit breaking made me stop and think about things, and I realised that all I really had to do was say inside the box "If a click event has been received AND (and this was the fix) You (the component) now have focus then behave".
What I suspect is happening is that the flex box container receives the click, and then tells all of its children that a click happened.
What disappoints me is, if what I suspect is true, then I would have expected Claude to have known that either from the tview documentation OR from reading the tview code (Claude does seem well acquainted with the library)
If my suspicion is correct then the second and third issues Claude claimed were causing me the bug were partially true, that is the flex container is on top of the components, which is an overlap, just not the components themselves overlapping.
The second partial correctness is that the way that the click is being propagated to the components seems to be that the flex box container is telling all of its child components that a click occurred. This isn't really a bug, it's likely well documented (as if I would RTFM...) or clear from the code.
I don't understand how you can have the patience to deal with an LLM like that. As if you're dealing with a low skilled but highly stubborn intern.
Sounds like an awful waste of time to me.
I have been a SWE for about 15 years, the majority of my career has been dealing with people that have about the same understanding as the LLMs, who scream abuse at me because their suggested solutions were invalid (in fact you can see someone heading down that path in another thread on this page)
The LLMs are less likely to run to HR when I tell them to eff 0ff with their stupidity (tested - told Claude that it had already effing suggested the bad index one and it was wrong because..., to which it politely apologised.. and re-suggested another one of its three suggestions)
So, from that point of view - LLMs are superior to some of the "senior" developers I have the misfortune of having to deal with previously.
As for my patience - I don't think I am being patient so much as doggedly determined to finding what I know is a fixable bug, that is, I will just keep gnawing at what I think should be fixable until a solution comes along, or I find something else shiny to occupy my spare time with (this being two side projects - the code and the testing of how good LLMs really are)
exhibit c - this is the guy that is also exhibit a
FTR, me being told what to do by the other individual hardly sounds like I'm the one mentoring... but failure to read and comprehend has already proved to be your style.
Yep, LLMs tend to get into weird snags like this, usually with either niche or state of the art stuff.
I tried to get a game prototype up and running with https://spacetimedb.com - GPT-5 was clearly working with outdated information and couldn't get anything done. It just reverted back to things that didn't exist (commands had changed, their arguments were different).
Same project, same GPT-5. This time it went in weird circles when I tried to use Deno as the backend. First it understood how to import Phaser to Deno, then it forgot. Then it remembered. Then it forgot. All within the same conversation with us trying to get SOMETHING on the browser =)
A click event being sent to all elements inside a container if it clearly occurred on just one is what I'd consider an event propagation bug. I've never seen that happen before. Even if it's documented, it's pretty strange.
Having said that it was a good circuit breaker, Claude was stuck on three wrong solutions to an issue, and having to re explain it meant that I realised what the bug was without further input from Claude
edit: FTR where Claude was stuck (and where it helped me)
First, I have a TUI application, written in Go, that is using https://github.com/rivo/tview - I chose tview basically at random, having no background in any of the TUI libraries available, but tview looked like it was easy to understand.
I had written some of the code, but it wasn't doing what I wanted of it. I had gotten Gemini to help me, but it still wasn't doing what I wanted.
Claude first suggested that the application needed to be refactored to make it into an Event Driven MVC TUI app, which I absolutely agreed with.
Claude counselled me on my understanding of the Run() command, and how it was a blocking call (which I hadn't realised). The refactor/re-architecture fixed the way things were being run a great deal.
However I still had a bug that I could not fix, and Claude was equally stumped (as was Gemini)
When I clicked on any of the components in a flex row, the first component behaved as though it was the one that was clicked. When I clicked on any of the components in another flex row the last one behaved as though it was the one that had been clicked.
Claude repeatedly told me that the problem was that the closure that used the index of components (inside a loop) was the problem.
This was outright wrong because
1. That bug has been fixed in Go.
2. The code I was sharing with Claude had the "fix" of local := index - meaning that the local version should have been correct
3. I repeatedly showed Claude logs (that it suggested I create) that showed that ALL of the components were in fact receiving the click event.
The second solution that Claude was fixated on was that th components overlapped one another inside the flex box.
This was partially incorrect.
I told Claude that I could visually see that the components weren't overlapping.
I also told Claude that there were borders around each component that clearly weren't overlapping.
I gave Claude debug logs that showed that the mouse click co-ordinates were inside a single component.
The third issue that Claude claimed was the problem was a click propagation bug in the library.
Claude repeated these claims several times, despite me showing that it wasn't either of the first two things, and I could not find a bug/issue for the third.
The circuit breaking made me stop and think about things, and I realised that all I really had to do was say inside the box "If a click event has been received AND (and this was the fix) You (the component) now have focus then behave".
What I suspect is happening is that the flex box container receives the click, and then tells all of its children that a click happened.
What disappoints me is, if what I suspect is true, then I would have expected Claude to have known that either from the tview documentation OR from reading the tview code (Claude does seem well acquainted with the library)
If my suspicion is correct then the second and third issues Claude claimed were causing me the bug were partially true, that is the flex container is on top of the components, which is an overlap, just not the components themselves overlapping.
The second partial correctness is that the way that the click is being propagated to the components seems to be that the flex box container is telling all of its child components that a click occurred. This isn't really a bug, it's likely well documented (as if I would RTFM...) or clear from the code.