Comment by ramoz
6 hours ago
I did a sort of bell curve with this type of workflow over summer.
- Base Claude Code (released)
- Extensive, self-orchestrated, local specs & documentation; ie waterfall for many features/longer term project goals (summer)
- Base Claude Code (today)
Claude Code is getting better at orchestrating it's own subagents for divide/conquer type work.
My problem with these extensive self-orchestrated multi-agent / spec modes is the type of drift and rot of all the changes and then integrated parts of an application that a lot of the time end up in merge conflicts. Aside from my own decision cognitive space, it's also a lot to just generally orchestrate and review. I spent a ton of type enforcing Claude to use the system I put in place including documentation updates and continuous logging of work.
I feel extremely productive with a single Claude Code for a project. Maybe for minor features, I'll launch Claude Code in the web so that it can operate in an isolated space to knock them out and create a PR.
I will plan and annotate extensively for large features, but not many features or broad project specs all at the same time. Annotation and better planning UX, I think, are going to be increasingly important for now. The only augment of Claude Code I have is a hook for plan mode review: https://github.com/backnotprop/plannotator
The merge conflicts and cognitive load are indeed two big struggles with my setup. Going back to a single Claude instances however would mean I’m waiting for things to happen most of the time. What do you do while Claude is busy?
It is one of those things I look and thing, yeah you are hyper productive... but it looks cognitively like being a pilot landing a plane all day long, and not what I signed up for. Where is my walk in the local park where I think through stuff and come up with a great idea :(
I think that's slightly the wrong way to look at this multi agent stuff.
I have between 3 and 6 hours per day where I can sit in front of a laptop and work directly with the code. The more of the actual technical planning/coding/testing/bug fixing loop I can get done in that time the better. If I can send out multiple agents to implement a plan I wrote yesterday, while another agent fixes lint and type errors, a third agent or two or three are working with me on either brainstorming or new plans, that's great! I'll go out for a walk in the park and think deeply during the rest of the day.
When people hear about all of these agent - working on three plans at once, really? - it sounds overwhelming. But realistically there's a lot of downtime from both sides. I ask the agent a question, it spends 5-10 minutes exploring. During that time I check on another agent or read some code that has been generated, or do some research of my own. Then I'll switch back to that terminal when I'm ready and ask a follow up question, mark the plan as ready, or whatever.
The worst thing I did when I was first getting excited about how agents were good now, a whole two months ago, was set things up so I could run a terminal on my phone and start sessions there. That really did destroy my deep thinking time, and lasted for about 3 days before I deleted termux.
it can be cognitively demanding but you adapt and often get in a flow state… but it’s nothing like programming used to be though and I get that
Quite a bit.
- Research
- Scan the web
- Text friends
- Side projects
- Take walks outside
etc