Thread

Getting the most out of Opus 5.5 in Claude and Claude Code

232 points · 156 comments · saikatsg

epistasis · 1791063596 · focus · HN ↗
I really hate long tasks. Claude never gets things right, at least for me, and wastes tons of time when a simple question would have gotten me to the right result rather than several turns of correcting bad decisions in addition to the long amounts of wasted thinking time.
What sort of workloads do well with these long tasks? The big labs are optimizing for long run time on their own, but it seems like a terrible thing to optimize on unless you're trying to do something like prove a hard math theorem, which success is clearly defined and the route doesn't matter a ton.
Plan mode has been made increasingly useless. I need to discuss to iterate to get the desired design, explore options, because Claude never gets it right first try and I don't have enough knowledge of options to specify everything up front.
Ah well, the Chinese models will still work well, I guess.
1. istjohn · 1791064659 · focus · HN ↗
  Look up the grilling skill[0]. To make it even better, tell Claude to modify it to use the AskUserQuestion functionality. It's so much better than plan mode.
  0. <a href="https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/skills/productivity/grilling/SKILL.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/skills/produc...
2. ricardobeat · 1791065111 · focus · HN ↗
  Plan mode has become pointless since Opus 5 came out, they know when to switch between planning and execution now. But that iteration/discussion is still necessary unless you're building completely blind - the model cannot read your mind.
  I've had it running 8h+ of non-stop optimizations, chasing a performance target, rewriting systems or building a series of prototypes for research. All it needs is a clear goal.
  1. epistasis · 1791135587 · focus · HN ↗
    My experience is that Claude has gotten absolutely terrible at switching between planning and execution, and never gets it right, and then I waste tons of turns fixing intent, and trying to make claude forget the bad shit it did.
    There needs to be a mode where it's "don't change code, don't lock in decisions, lets explore", and the problem with plan mode is that it all of a sudden presents a too-long, multi-screen plan that's just completely off base with basically two option: "go and do it all" or "tell me what's wrong and then I'll make a small modification on two screenfulls of text and not tell you what I changed."
    If it works for you, great, but Claude was far better for me before 5. it got slightly better with 5.5, but the harness deteriorates every days as programmers try to gain internal clout by shoving in poor features.
    Pi is such a relief in comparison to Claude, those who can use it really should.
3. Merad · 1791084823 · focus · HN ↗
  Use the superpowers plugin. It's a game changer. You start by building out a spec defining the work you want to be done, then claude writes a detailed implementation plan. It can easily work for hours without interruption, and the process integrates testing (TDD when possible) and review steps along the way. I even did one fairly complex POC for work that had claude implementing for almost 3 days straight, with me stopping it and handing off to a new session when context hit about 800k. The process is slower and more methodical than the way claude works by default but the output is much better.

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