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infomiho | 4 months ago

I've been successfully "vibe engineering" with Claude Code for a week now on a side quest at my job. I want the result to be of high enough quality to maybe survive in our codebase long-term, but I don't want to write it myself.

So I've added unit tests, e2e tests, formatting checks to help Claude to self-correct as much as possible. And I make him do a TON of self-review, after each feature I say something like:

> You are a master reviewer, lots of practical experience. Read Clean Code. Great at architecture. Read Effective Typescript as well. What would you comment in a PR review? Type checking MUST PASS, unit tests must PASS, formatting must PASS.

With each review, Claude catches a lot of sub-optimal choices it made which gives me more confidence in the code I get in the end.

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drcxd|4 months ago

Do you really believe that if you miss the "Read Clean Code" or "Read Effective Typescript" part, then the output would be significantly different?

No offense, but I feel this kind of talking is ridiculous. If it is a better practice, then it should be done without explicitly telling so. You do not tell them "Do not get things wrong," right? If it is a matter of choice over design patterns, for example, use functional programming or object oriented programming paradigm, then it should be said more clearly as what I have done.

Now, if it is neither something that is definitely a better practice nor something you can state clearly with a known, well-defined word, how can you make sure what you have said really make a difference if you have not said it?

infomiho|4 months ago

It works for me and I like the results I'm getting. The results often include callbacks to rules of thumb from the mentioned books - which I find easier to agree with or dismiss when I see the suggestions it made. In a way, it's a framework for me to "communicate" with the LLMs.

I think you should try finding what works for you, maybe even give my ridiculous prompt a go.