Claude Code: An Agentic cleanroom analysis

[thegeomaster]

This is kinda frustrating to read. The style is very busy, and it lacks a clear structure. It's basically an information dump without any acknowledgment of what's important or not. Big-O notation is provided for a lot of operations where you wouldn't really care about Big-O (in a system where calls to an LLM dominate, this is most operations). Big picture story about how Claude Code actually works, as in what happens when I type in a prompt (which I'm very much interested, given how much I use it) is lacking. Some diagrams are so nonsensical they become funny. Look at this: https://southbridge-research.notion.site/Prompt-Engineering-... In general, the prompt engineering page, which deserves maybe the most detailed treatment, is just a dump of prompts and LLM bullet point filler.

I don't want to be overly negative, but I think it's only fair given the author hasn't graced us with their own thoughts, instead offloading the actual writing to an LLM.

[triyambakam]

Claude Code with Sonnet 4 is so good I've stopped using Aider. This has been hugely productive. I've been able to write agents that Claude Code can spawn and call out to for other models, even.

[__mharrison__]

What does it give you that enabling Sonnet as a backend for Aider doesn't?

[cedws]

Could you briefly explain your workflow? I use Zed’s agent mode and I don’t really understand how people are doing it purely through the CLI. How do you get a decent workflow where you can approve individual hunks? Aren’t you missing out on LSP help doing it in the CLI?

[scuff3d]

If this is what software engineering is going to become I'm finding a new job.

[shostack]

What are some examples of agents you've created that you regularly use?

[rane]

Have you been able to interface Claude Code with Gemini 2.5 Pro? I'm finding that Gemini 2.5 Pro is still better at solving certain problems and architecture and it would be great to be able to consult directly in CC.

[InGoldAndGreen]

The "LLMs perspective" section is hiding at the end of this notion is a literal goldmine

[numeri]

No, it's completely useless, and puts the entire rest of the analysis in a bad light.

LLMs have next to no understanding of their own internal processes. There's a significant amount of research that demonstrates this. All explanations of an internal thought process in an LLM are completely reverse engineered to fit the final answer (interestingly, humans are also prone to this – seen especially in split brain experiments).

In addition, the degree to which the author must have prompted the LLM to get it to anthropomorphize this hard makes the rest of the project suspect. How many of the results are repeated human prompting until the author liked the results, and how many come from actual LLM intelligence/analysis skill?

[mholm]

It's sure phrased like one, but I'd be careful to attribute LLM thought process to what it says it's thinking. LLMs are experts at working backwards to justify why they came to an answer, even when it's entirely fabricated

[demarq]

It's the best thing I've read from an LLM!

It sounds a lot like like the Murderbot character in the AppleTV show!

[MoonGhost]

> Your browser is not compatible with Notion. Please upgrade to the latest browser version, or visit our help center for more information.

FireFox 113.0.2, how come?

[vohk]

That's a two year old release now. I think Notion may have a fair point on this one.

[fullstackchris]

also, i will say, (if we can trust the findings in these notes are relatively accurate of the real implementation) is a PERFECT example of the real level of complexity used in cutting edge configuration of using LLM... its not just some complex fancy prompt you give to a model in a chat window... there is so much important stuff happening behind the scenes... though i suppose the people who complain about LLMs hallucinating / screwing up havent tried claude code or any agentic work flows - or, it could be their architecture / code is so poorly written and poorly organized that even the LLM itself struggles to modify it properly

[girvo]

> or, it could be their architecture / code is so poorly written and poorly organized that even the LLM itself struggles to modify it properly

You wrote this like this is some rare occurrence, and not a description of a bulk of the production code that exists today, even at high level tech companies.

[ramoz]

For large codebases and task management, you can empower Claude Code with a simple filesystem framework. https://x.com/backnotprop/status/1929020702453100794

It sees everything it needs to in one pass, no extra reasoning or instruction tokens around things like MCP that abstract and create hops to simple understanding of where things are at.

[ramoz]

There is something here about the native filesystem and tooling. & some type of insight into what agentic software engineering will look like - I mostly feel like an orchestrator, or validator in the terminal window next to Claude Code where i run tests/related things.

I was never a great terminal developer, I cant even type right - but Claude Code by far provides the best software engineering interface in there terms of LLM/agent UX.

[owebmaster]

I have nothing against LLM-generated content. But when publishing, make sure the content is displayed correctly and that it is enjoyable to read.

[29athrowaway]

If you want an example of a good analytical breakdown of some technology, look at this as an example: https://fabiensanglard.net/quake3/network.php

It is good because it highlights the relevant aspects of the design and you can use this, plus some other resources, to replicate the idea.

[fullstackchris]

interesting... the analysis finds that the MCP supports websockets as a transport... when there is big drama going on right now that anthropic said "they will never support that", folks hating SSE, and so on and so forth

[numeri]

Is the analysis right, or did the LLM hallucinate this?

[flipthefrog]

Light green text on light brown background is pretty ridiculous. I gave up after 30 seconds