Birbla

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Hacker News

This is definitely controversial, but I think the best CLAUDE.MD is no CLAUDE.MD at all. Every time I found myself wanting to put information into that file, I asked myself "Why isn't this already obvious from the code itself?"

I don't need to tell the agent my tech stack, what DB access library I'm using, the way in which I write my tests, etc. Why? Because it's all very clearly spelled out within the code itself. I've gone great lengths to make sure that my fairly complex domain can be understood by a person with little domain knowledge, which means it should certainly be understood by a tool that has a wealth of it.

by mexicocitinluez

I thought it would be a litteral cookbook on how to make plausible/feasible recipes with LLMs (we're not here yet sadly).

by AntiqueFig

Does anybody here have a frontend development workflow that works well with coding agents? In my experience coding agents ship buggy, broken, incomplete, or awkward frontend features at a way higher frequency than they do for backend features. The reason seems obviously to be the difference in verifiability between the two. Basic test suites dont seem to help much. I assume something like Garry Tan’s gstack is the right direction but I dont know if that particular tool is mature enough to adopt yet. I was surprised too see here on HN recently that gemini 3.5 flash may outperform Opus/gpt-5.5 on frontend tasks (maybe because of Gemini’s supposed edge w.r.t. multimodality? or maybe it understands Chrome more deeply?), can anyone here second that take?

by killthebuddha

Thanks! I also like the OpenAI Cookbook: https://developers.openai.com/cookbook

Other AI labs also tend to publish examples and cookbooks on GitHub and Hugging Face, so it's always worth keeping an eye on those as well.

by beklein

I've been using Matt Pocock's skills at home, and they seem pretty great. He makes a great case for them vs other skills in his videos. I don't remember the exact arguments, but basically they're designed to be called by the user instead of called automatically, and that makes them take less context merely because they exist.

I've also found that they tend to coerce the programmer into thinking about the end result, rather than try to push them out of that role. His grill skills are about making sure the actual requirements are known, and his prototype skill can help explore things that need to be experienced to make a hard decision on.

by wccrawford

Gotta be honest, almost every "how to use AI" resource seems pointless to me. I'm either going to ask the AI how to do it, or if it's about using the AI then we can just bake it into the harness or wait for Anthropic/OpenAI to do it for me because they're always trivial.

All of these resources on agentic workflows, managing agent memory, harness engineering, etc. appear to just be theatre to me.

by mindwok

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  • Hacker News
  • This is definitely controversial, but I think the best CLAUDE.MD is no CLAUDE.MD at all. Every time I found myself wanting to put information into that file, I asked myself "Why isn't this already obvious from the code itself?"

    I don't need to tell the agent my tech stack, what DB access library I'm using, the way in which I write my tests, etc. Why? Because it's all very clearly spelled out within the code itself. I've gone great lengths to make sure that my fairly complex domain can be understood by a person with little domain knowledge, which means it should certainly be understood by a tool that has a wealth of it.

    by mexicocitinluez
  • I thought it would be a litteral cookbook on how to make plausible/feasible recipes with LLMs (we're not here yet sadly).
    by AntiqueFig
  • Does anybody here have a frontend development workflow that works well with coding agents? In my experience coding agents ship buggy, broken, incomplete, or awkward frontend features at a way higher frequency than they do for backend features. The reason seems obviously to be the difference in verifiability between the two. Basic test suites dont seem to help much. I assume something like Garry Tan’s gstack is the right direction but I dont know if that particular tool is mature enough to adopt yet. I was surprised too see here on HN recently that gemini 3.5 flash may outperform Opus/gpt-5.5 on frontend tasks (maybe because of Gemini’s supposed edge w.r.t. multimodality? or maybe it understands Chrome more deeply?), can anyone here second that take?
    by killthebuddha
  • Thanks! I also like the OpenAI Cookbook: https://developers.openai.com/cookbook

    Other AI labs also tend to publish examples and cookbooks on GitHub and Hugging Face, so it's always worth keeping an eye on those as well.

    by beklein
  • I've been using Matt Pocock's skills at home, and they seem pretty great. He makes a great case for them vs other skills in his videos. I don't remember the exact arguments, but basically they're designed to be called by the user instead of called automatically, and that makes them take less context merely because they exist.

    I've also found that they tend to coerce the programmer into thinking about the end result, rather than try to push them out of that role. His grill skills are about making sure the actual requirements are known, and his prototype skill can help explore things that need to be experienced to make a hard decision on.

    by wccrawford
  • https://platform.claude.com/cookbook/coding-prompting-for-fr...

    Before: bland

    After: bland with gradients

    by gherkinnn
  • The before and after images in “prompting for frontend aesthetics” are hilarious. Did no one look at these to make sure the skill actually improved the design?

    https://platform.claude.com/cookbook/coding-prompting-for-fr...

    by semiquaver
  • Gotta be honest, almost every "how to use AI" resource seems pointless to me. I'm either going to ask the AI how to do it, or if it's about using the AI then we can just bake it into the harness or wait for Anthropic/OpenAI to do it for me because they're always trivial.

    All of these resources on agentic workflows, managing agent memory, harness engineering, etc. appear to just be theatre to me.

    by mindwok