Comment by fragmede
2 days ago
> Just for fun, once I had played a bit with it like that, I just told it to finish the application with some vague Jira-epic level instructions on what I wanted in it and then fed it the errors it got.
Would you finish the application with "some vague Jira-epic level instructions"? Or, even if you don't formally make tickets in Jira for them, do you go from vague Jira-epic-sized notions to ticket-sized items? If I had a mind-control helmet that forced you to just write code and not let you break down that jira-epic in your thoughts, do you think the code would be any good? I don't think mine would be.
So then, why does it seem reasonable that Claude would be any good, given such a mental straight jacket? Use planning mode, the keyword "ultrathink" and the phrase "do not write code", and have it break down the vage Jira epic into ticket-sized items, and then have it break it into sub tickets that are byte-sized tasks, and then have it get to work.
I mean, I didn't really expect it to work, I just wanted to see what would happen. I'd had pretty good results thus far and wondered how far I could push it. Jira-epic-style prompts was, not surprisingly, pushing it too far.
It did manage to get the application working though, with only a couple of "this thing broke, plz fix" style prompts, and it did better than I had thought it would to fulfill my intention, give how vague I was.
My point was that if you're going to build an actual product, you should probably not use Claude in that way. Break down the epics to smaller more manageable chunks however, and Claude can do an amazing job! I'll definitely keep experimenting with it this way, it's way better than full-manual coding, or at least that's my initial impression of about a week of experimentation!