Comment by anonzzzies
4 hours ago
We found, especially with Opus and recent claude code that it is better/more precise at reading existing code for figuring out what the current status is than reading specs. It seems (for us) it is less precise at 'comprehending' the spec English than it is the code and that will sometimes reflect in wrong assumptions for new tasks which will result in incorrect implementations of those tasks. So we dropped this. Because of caching, it doesn't seem too bad on the tokens either.
Specs with agents seem destined for drift. It'll randomly change something you dont know about and it will go too fast for you to really keep it updated. I went from using claude code totally naively to using little project management frameworks to now just using it by itself again. Im gettin the best results like this, and usually start in planning mode (unless the issue is quite small/clear).
My experience has been that it gets worse with more structure. You misinform it and heavily bias it's results in ways you dont intend. Maybe there are AI wizards out there with the perfect system of markdown artifacts but I found it increased the trouble a lot and made the results worse. It's a non deterministic system. Knock yourself out tryin to micromanage it.