Ask HN: Why is my Claude experience so bad? What am I doing wrong?

Comments

verdverm | 2026-02-13 08:29 UTC

It takes many months to figure this out, much longer than learning a new programming language.

Read through anthropics knowledge share, check out their system prompts extracted on github, write more words in AGENTS/CLAUDE.md, you need to give them some warmup to do better at tasks.

What model are you using? Size matters and Gemini is far better at UI design work. At the same time, pairing gemini-3-flash with claude-code derived prompts makes it nearly as good as Pro

Words matter, the way you phrase something can have disproportionate effect. They are fragile at times, yet surprisingly resilient at others. They will deeply frustrate you and amaze you on a daily basis. The key is to get better at recognizing this earlier and adjusting

You can find many more anecdotes and recommendations by looking through HN stories and social media (Bluesky has a growing Ai crowd, coming over from X, good community bump recently, there are an anti-ai labelers/block lists to keep the flak down)

delaminator | 2026-02-13 09:06 UTC

You aren't telling us anything about how you're using it. So how can we tell you what you're doing wrong? You're just reporting what happened.

You haven't even said what programming language you're trying to use, or even what platform.

It sounds to me like you didn't do much planning, you just gave it a prompt to build away.

My preferred method of building things, and I've built a lot of things using Claude, is to have a discussion with it in the chatbot. The back and forth of exploring the idea gives you a more solid idea of what you're looking for. Once we've established the idea I get it to write a spec and a plan.

I have this as an instruction in my profile.

> When we're discussing a coding project, don't produce code unless asked to. We discuss projects here, Claude Code does the actual coding. When we're ready, put all the documents in a zip file for easy transfer (downloading files one at a time and uploading them is not fun on a phone). Include a CONTENTS.md describing the contents and where to start.

So I'll give you this one as an example. It's a Qwen driven System monitor.

https://github.com/lawless-m/Marvinous

here are the documents generated in chat before trying to build anything

https://github.com/lawless-m/Marvinous/tree/master/ai-monito...

At this point I can usually say "The instructions are in the zip, read the contents and make a start." and the first pass mostly works.

causal | 2026-02-17 17:15 UTC

Yeah if the prompt is as specific as this post, then that's probably the issue...

Leftium | 2026-02-13 10:06 UTC

It seems to me you expect Claude to be able to one-shot your tool based on a single prompt. Potentially "vibe-coding" as in the sense: you don't know how to develop this yourself (perhaps you are not a software developer?)

While this may be possible, it likely requires a very detailed prompt and/or spec document.

---

Here is an example of something I successfully built with Claude: https://rift-transcription.vercel.app

Apparently I have had over 150 chat sessions related to the research and development of this tool.

- First, we wrote a spec together: https://github.com/Leftium/rift-transcription/blob/main/spec...

- The spec broke down development into major phases. I reviewed detailed plans for each phase before Claude started. I often asked Claude to update these detailed plans before starting. And after implementation, I often had to have Claude fix bugs in the implementation.

- I tried to share the chat session where Claude got the first functional MVP working: https://opncd.ai/share/fXsPn1t1 (unfortunately the shared session is truncated)

---

"AI mistakes you're probably making": https://youtu.be/Jcuig8vhmx4

I think the most relevant point is: AI is best for accelerating development tasks you could do on your own; not new tasks you don't know how to do.

---

Finally: Cloudlflare builds OAuth with Claude and publishes all the prompts: https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/44159166

delaminator | 2026-02-13 11:21 UTC

I got Claude to make a tool to record all of the prompts in and all of the responses out. but not the actual file changes.

https://github.com/lawless-m/Devolver

it uses hooks to export the session

https://github.com/lawless-m/Devolver/blob/master/HOOKS.md

and then parses the session logs and dumps them out

https://github.com/lawless-m/Devolver/blob/master/JSONL_FORM...

I then have it go to a central location because I use multiple machines and it creates a website so I can see what I've been working on.

    Project | Prompts | Tools | Files | Words In | Words Out | Tokens In | Tokens Out | Cache R/W | Last Activity
    Nawin | 10688 | 74568 | 7724 | 1201.3k | 1379.5k | 592.0k | 83.3k | 3221.4M/199.5M | 2026-01-30 20:31
    Crabbit | 3232 | 14252 | 1348 | 310.4k | 259.1k | 82.7k | 17.6k | 755.0M/51.2M | 2026-01-30 08:22

Reading these figures now, I think it counts its own prompts, you know it talks to itself. There's no way I've typed ten thousand prompts on that project

trcf23 | 2026-02-15 22:20 UTC

Wow thanks for sharing! Could you explain how you made the specs? Did you already know pretty much everything you wanted to cover before hand? Was one CC session enough to go through it?

In my experience, trying to make a plan/specs that really match what I want often ends in a struggle with Claude trying to regress to the mean.

Also it’s so easy to write code that I always have tons of ideas I end up implementing that diverge from the original plan…

Leftium | 2026-02-16 01:09 UTC

- No, I did not know everything I wanted to cover beforehand. Claude helps me brainstorm, research, and elaborate on my ideas. The spec is a living document that I occasionally check in: https://github.com/Leftium/rift-transcription/commits/main/s...

- It was definitely not one CC session. In fact, this spec is a spin-off of several other specs on several other branches/projects.

- I've actually experienced quite the opposite: I suggest an idea for the spec and Claude says "great idea!" Then I change my mind and go in the opposite direction: "great idea!" again. Once in a while, I have to argue with Claude to get my idea implemented (like adding dependencies to parse into a proper AST instead of regex.)

- One tip: it's very useful to explain the "why" to Claude vs the "what." In fact, if you just explain the why/problem without a specific solution, Claude's suggestions may surprise you!

nottorp | 2026-02-16 10:14 UTC

> It seems to me you expect Claude to be able to one-shot your tool based on a single prompt.

Yes, this is what the hype says doesn't it?

Or... are they all lying?

Kim_Bruning | 2026-02-16 11:26 UTC

I guess the AI Koans are still relevant:

A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on.

Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: “You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.”

Knight turned the machine off and on.

The machine worked.

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/koans.html

SyneRyder | 2026-02-16 12:03 UTC

That isn't what the hype is. If that's the kind of stuff you're reading about or watching, you should find better sources. You can one-shot some things, and it makes for an impressive demo (oh yay, yet another video game made instantly) but anything larger and more useful will probably be a conversation. (Though not necessarily with a human, AIs can discuss it among themselves too.)

Your first one-shot might be a good rough prototype. From there, you continue the conversation with your refinements. While Claude goes and works on that for 15 minutes - you can go and do other work. Or talk with another Claude in another window to make progress on another project.

A good mental model is to imagine you're talking to a remote developer. You need to give them an extremely detailed spec on the first go if you expect them to get it right the first time. Sometimes it's better to explain "this is my grand vision, but how about we first mockup a prototype to see if that's actually how I want it to work". Sometimes Claude will suggest you talk about your plan together first to remove the ambiguities from the plan, or you can encourage Claude to do that with you.

(Also, the remote developer mindset is useful - treat the remote developer with respect, with humanity, and they're more likely to be helpful towards you and motivated to align with your goals.)

Consider that in an hour or two of conversation, you now have your app, completed, fully debugged... and not once did you look at the code, and you spent half of that time catching up on your other tasks. That's vibe coding.

Mumps | 2026-02-16 11:31 UTC

Thanks for sharing!

Like OP, I've been similarly struggling to get as much value from CC (grok et c) as "everyone" else seems to be.

I'm quite curious about the workflow around the spec you link. To me, it looks like quite an extensive amount of work/writing. Comparable or greater than the coding work, by amount, even. Basically trading writing code files for writing .md files. 150 chat sessions is also nothing to sneeze at.

Would you say that the spec work was significantly faster (pure time) than coding up the project would have been? Or perhaps a less taxing cognitive input?

Leftium | 2026-02-16 12:00 UTC

Yes, it's a lot of spec work. But a lot of it is research and exploring alternatives. Sometimes Claude suggests ideas I would have never thought of or attempted on my own. Like a custom python websocket server: https://github.com/Leftium/rift-local

(I also implemented the previous version with only a high-level, basic understanding of websockets: https://rift-transcription.vercel.app/sherpa)

I think of Claude like a "force-multiplier."

I have been able to implement ideas I previously gave up on. I can test out new ideas much faster.

For example, https://github.com/Leftium/gg started out as 100% hand-crafted code. I wanted gg to be able to print out the expression in the code in addition to the value like python icecream. (It's more useful to get both the value and the variable name/expression.) I previously tried, and gave up. Claude helped me add this feature within a few hours.

And now gg has its own virtual dev console optimized for interacting with coding agents. A very useful feature that I would probaly not have attempted without Claude. It's taken the "open in editor" feture to a completely new level.

I have implemented other features that I would have never attempted or even thought about. For example without Claud's assistance https://ws.leftium.com would not have many features like the animated background that resembles the actual sky color.

60 minute forecast was on my TODO list for a long time. Claude helped me add it within an afternoon or so.

Note: depending on complexity of the feature I want to add the spec varies in the level of detail. Sometimes there is no spec outside Claude's plans in the chat session.

[1]: https://github.com/gruns/icecream

rootnod3 | 2026-02-16 11:32 UTC

> Finally: Cloudlflare builds OAuth with Claude and publishes all the prompts: https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/44159166

Lord help us

aristofun | 2026-02-13 22:17 UTC

If you expect it to _do_ things for you - you're setting yourself up for failure.

If you treat it as an astonishingly sophisticated and extremely powerful autocomplete (which it is) - you have plenty of opportunities to make your life better.

phtrivier | 2026-02-15 22:05 UTC

To be fair with OP, the hype about what the tool is "supposed" to be doing ("your accountants will rebuild the ERP over the week end, you don't need programmers, etc...") is setting a dev up for frustration.

Personnaly, I'm trying to learn the "make it write the plan, fix the plan, break it down even more, etc..." loops that are necessary; but I haven't had a use case (yet?) where the total time spent developing the thing was radically shorter.

LLMs make wonders on bootstrapping a greenfield project. Unfortunately, you tend to only do this only once ;)

al_borland | 2026-02-16 01:24 UTC

> LLMs make wonders on bootstrapping a greenfield project. Unfortunately, you tend to only do this only once ;)

This is why LLMs look so impressive in demos. Demos are nearly always greenfield, small in scale, and as long as it launches, it looks successful.

mrgoldenbrown | 2026-02-15 22:13 UTC

In other words, if we believe what the CEOs of the AI companies claim, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment.

ecesena | 2026-02-14 20:51 UTC

Try a prompt that helps claude iterate until it can verify the result.

For example, if you tell it to compile and run tests, you should never be in a situation with syntax errors.

But if you don’t give a prompt that allows to validate the result, then it’s going to get you whatever.

ford | 2026-02-15 21:40 UTC

I've found it really valuable to pair with people, sit at a computer together while they're driving and using AI. It's really interesting to see how other people prompt & use AI to explore the problem.

wewewedxfgdf | 2026-02-15 21:44 UTC

Claude is a programming assistant not a programmer.

You still need knowledge of what you are building so you can drive it, guide it, fix things.

This is the core of the question about LLM assisted programming - what happens when non programmers use it?

realusername | 2026-02-16 03:33 UTC

> what happens when non programmers use it?

We have the answer already, which product was fully built by a non-programmer with those tools? I can't find an example.

They just trip into their own code at some point and if there's nobody to watch, they end up with something they can't recover from.

It's especially devastating when they don't know enough git to get back on tracks

baq | 2026-02-15 21:45 UTC

it's a tool, not an oracle. you build with it, you aren't its customer, you're its wielder.

for now, anyway.

exe34 | 2026-02-15 21:47 UTC

could you share an md of your prompts? I find with those tools I still have to break the problem down into verifiable pieces, and only move on to the next step once the previous steps are as expected.

syntax error is nothing, I just paste the error into the tui and it fixes it usually.

esaym | 2026-02-15 21:49 UTC

Add https://github.com/obra/superpowers

and then try again.

i_am_a_bad_llm | 2026-02-16 00:32 UTC

I think this reply might have been downvoted for being a bit glib, but the superpowers plugin took my Claude Code experience from mostly frustrating to nearly-magical

I’m not a software engineer by training nor trade, so caveats apply, but I found that the brainstorming -> plan writing -> plan execution flow provided by the skills in this plugin helps immensely with extracting assumptions and unsaid preferences into a comprehensive plan—-very similar to the guidance elsewhere in this thread, except automated/guided along by the plugin skills