Comment by asdev

Comment by asdev 2 days ago

17 replies

you really don't need any of this crap. you just need Claude Code and CLAUDE.MD in directories where you need to direct it. complicated AI set ups are mid curve

parpfish 2 days ago

I refuse to learn all the complicated configuration because none of it will matter when they drop the next model.

Things that need special settings now won’t in the future and vice versa.

It’s not worth investing a bunch of time into learning features and prompting tricks that will be obsoleted soon

  • AndyNemmity 2 days ago

    I wish that were true. Models don't feel like they've really had massive leaps.

    They do get better, but not enough to change any of the configuration I have.

    But you are correct, there is a real possibility that the time invested with be obsolete at some point.

    For sure the work towards MCPs are basically obsolete via skills. These things happen.

    • parpfish 2 days ago

      It doesn’t require any major improvement to the underlying model. As long they tinker with system prompts and builtin tools/settings, the coding agent will evolve in unpredictable ways out of my control

      • AndyNemmity 2 days ago

        That's a rational argument. In practice, what we're actually doing for the most part is managing context, and creating programs to run parts of tasks, so really the system prompts and builtin tools and settings have very little relevance.

    • dnautics 2 days ago

      i don't understand this mcp/skill distinction? one of the mcps i use indexes the runtime dependency of code modules so that claude can refactor without just blindly grepping.

      how would that be a "skill"? just wrap the mcp in a cli?

      fwiw this may be a skill issue, pun intended, but i can't seem to get claude to trigger skills, whereas it reaches for mcps more... i wonder if im missing something. I'm plenty productive in claude though.

      • AndyNemmity 2 days ago

        So MCPs are a bunch of, essenntially skill type objects. But it has to tell you about all of them, and information about all of them up front.

        So a Skill is just a smaller granulatrity level of that concept. It's just one of the individual things an MCP can do.

        This is about context management at some level. When you need to do a single thing within that full list of potential things, you don't need the instructions about a ton of other unrelated things in the context.

        So it's just not that deep. It would be having a python script or whatever that the skill calls that returns the runtime dependencies and gives them back to the LLM so they can refactor without blindly greping.

        Does that make sense?

      • austinbaggio 2 days ago

        In our experience, a lot of it is feel and dev preference. After talking to quite a few developers, we've found the skill was the easiest to get started with, but we also have a CLI tool and an MCP server too. You can check out the docs if you'd prefer to try those - feedback welcome: https://www.ensue-network.ai/docs#cli-tool

wouldbecouldbe 2 days ago

It seems to mostly ignore Claude.md

  • songodongo 2 days ago

    If you can test how often it is being used by having a line in there saying something like “You must start every non-code response with ‘Woohoo!’”

  • csar a day ago

    It’s told to only use it if relevant because most people write bad ones. Someone should write a tool to assess CLAUDE.md quality.

  • AndyNemmity 2 days ago

    It does, Claude.md is the least effective way to communicate to it.

    It's always interesting reading other people's approaches, because I just find them all so very different than my experience.

    I need Agents, and Skills to perform well.