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by com2kid 293 days ago
> 1) Don't ask for large / complex change. Ask for a plan but ask it to implement the plan in small steps and ask the model to test each step before starting the next.

I asked Claude Code to read a variable from a .env file.

It proceeded to write a .env parser from scratch.

I then asked it to just use Node's built in .env file parsing....

This was the 2nd time in the same session that it wrote a .env file parser from scratch. :/

Claude Code is amazing, but it'll goes off and does stupid even for simple requests.
2 comments
NitpickLawyer 293 days ago
Check your settings, they might be unable to read .env files as a guardrail.
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com2kid 292 days ago
I just reminded it to use the built in .env support and it did the right thing.

If you ignore that I had to pay for its initial failure...

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theshrike79 292 days ago
It doesn't say no.

For me it built a full-ass YAML parser when it couldn't use Viper to parse the configuration correctly :)

It was a fully vibe-coded project (I like playing stupid and seeing what the LLM does), but it got caught when the config got a bit more complex and its shitty regex-yaml-parser didn't work anymore. :)

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