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I do really like the Unix approach Claude Code takes, because it makes it really easy to create other Unix-like tools and have Claude use them with basically no

I do really like the Unix approach Claude Code takes, because it makes it really easy to create other Unix-like tools and have Claude use them with basically no integration overhead. Just give it the man page for your tool and it'll use it adeptly with no MCP or custom tool definition nonsense. I built a tool that lets Claude use the browser and Claude never has an issue using it.

lupusreal 1y ago
The light switch moment for me is when I realized I can tell claude to use linters instead of telling it to look for problems itself. The later generally works but having it call tools is way more efficient. I didn't even tell it what linters to use, I asked it for suggestions and it gave me about a dozen of suggestions, I installed them and it started using them without further instruction. I had tried coding with ChatGPT a year or so ago and the effort needed to get anything useful out of it greatly exceeded any benifit, so I went into CC with low expectations, but have been blown away.
- fragmede 1y ago
  The lightbulb moment for me was to have it make me a smoke test and to tell to run the test and fix issues (with the code it generated) until it passes. iterate over all features in the Todo.md (that I asked it to make). Claude code will go off and do stuff for I dunno, hours?, while I work on something else.
  - peteybeachsand 1y ago
    genius i gotta try this
  - joshstrange 1y ago
    Hours? Not in my experience. It will do a handful of tasks then say “Great! I’ve finished a block of tasks” and stop. and honestly, you’re gonna want to check its work periodically. You can’t even trust it to run litters and unit test reliably. I’ve lost count of how many times it’s skipped pre-commit checks or committed code with failing tests because it just gives up.
    - antonvs 1y ago
      I once had the Gemini CLI get into a loop of failures followed by self-flagellation where it ended saying something like "I'm sorry I have failed you, you should go and find someone capable of helping you."
      - visarga 1y ago
        I saw on X someone posted a screenshot where Gemini got depressed after repeated failure, apologized and actually uninstalled itself. Honorable seppuku.
  - linhan_dot_dev 1y ago
    I've been using this method for several weeks. The issue I'm currently facing is that Claude Code incorrectly believes it has completed the task and then stops. Let me illustrate with a specific, simple example: fixing linter or compiler errors. The problems I solve with this method are all verifiable via the command line (this can usually be documented in CLAUDE.md). Claude Code will continuously adjust the code based on the linter's output until all errors are resolved. This process often takes quite some time. I typically do this after completing a feature development. If Claude Code mistakenly thinks it has finished the task during one of these checks, it will halt the entire process. I then have to restart it using the same prompt to continue the task. Therefore, I'm looking for an external tool to manage Claude Code. I haven't found one yet. I've seen some articles suggesting the use of a subagents approach, where tools like Gemini CLI or Codex could launch Claude Code. I haven't thoroughly explored this method yet.
- maleldil 1y ago
  I have a Just task that runs linters (ruff and pyright, in my case), formatter, tests and pre-commit hooks, and have Claude run it every time it thinks it's done with a change. It's good enough that when the checks pass, it's usually complete.
  - simlevesque 1y ago
    A tip for everyone doing this: pipe the linters' stdout to /dev/null to save on tokens.
    - maleldil 1y ago
      Why? The agent needs the error messages from the linters to know what to do.
      - jamie_ca 1y ago
        If you're running linters for formatting etc, just get the agent to run them on autocorrect and it doesn't need to know the status as urgently.
        maleldil 1y ago
        That's just one part of it. I want the LLM to see type checking errors, failing test outputs, etc.
        ozim 1y ago
        Errors shouldn’t be on stdout ;)
        dymk 1y ago
        “Errors” printed by your linter aren’t errors, they’re reports
        1y ago
- libraryofbabel 1y ago
  As an extension of this idea: for some tasks, rather than asking Claude Code to do a thing, you can often get better results from asking Claude Code to write and run a script to do the thing. Example: read this log file and extract XYZ from it and show me a table of the results. Instead of having the agent read in the whole log file into the context and try to process it with raw LLM attention, you can get it to read in a sample and then write a script to process the whole thing. This works particularly well when you want to do something with math, like compute a mean or a median. LLMs are bad at doing math on their own, and good at writing scripts to do math for them. A lot of interesting techniques become possible when you have an agent that can write quick scripts or CLI tools for you, on the fly, and run them as well.
  - derefr 1y ago
    It's a bit annoying that you have to tell it to do it, though. Humans (or at least programmers) "build the tools to solve the problem" so intuitively and automatically when the problem starts to "feel hard", that it doesn't often occur to the average programmer that LLMs don't think like this. When you tell an LLM to check the code for errors, the LLM could simply "realize" that the problem is complex enough to warrant building [or finding+configuring] an appropriate tool to solve the problem, and so start doing that... but instead, even for the hardest problems, the LLM will try to brute-force a solution just by "staring at the code really hard." (To quote a certain cartoon squirrel, "that trick never works!" And to paraphrase the LLM's predictable response, "this time for sure!")
    - libraryofbabel 1y ago
      As the other commenter said, these days Claude Code often does actually reach for a script on its own, or for simpler tasks it will do a bash incantation with grep and sed. That is for tasks where a programmatic script solution is a good idea though. I don't think your example of "check the code for errors" really falls in that category - how would you write a script to do that? "Staring at the code really hard" to catch errors that could never have been caught with any static analysis tool is actually where an LLM really shines! Unless by "check for errors" you just meant "run a static analysis tool", in which case sure, it should run the linter or typechecker or whatever.
- ozgrakkurt 1y ago
  How is this better than calling `cargo clippy` or similar commands yourself?
  - s900mhz 1y ago
    Claude can then proceed to fix the issues for you
    - mcqueenjordan 1y ago
      Presumably cargo clippy --fix was the intention. Not all things are fixable, though, which is where LLMs are reasonable for -- the squishy hard-to-autofix things.
hboon 1y ago
How does Claude Code use the browser in your script/tool? I've always wanted to control my existing Safari session windows rather than a Chrome or a separate/new Chrome instance.
- wraptile 1y ago
  Most browsers these days expose a control API (like ChromeDevtools Protocol MCP [1]) that open up a socket API and can take in json instructions for bidirectional communication. Chrome is the gold standard here but both Safari and Firefox have their own driver. For you existing browser session you'd have to start it already with open socket connection as by default that's not enabled but once you do the server should able to find an open local socket and connect to it and execute controls. worth nothing that this "control browser" hype is quite deceiving and it doesn't really work well imo because LLMs still suck at understanding the DOM so you need various tricks to optimize for that so I would take OP's claims with a giant bag of salt. Also these automations are really easy to identify and block as they are not organic inputs so the actual use is very limited. - https://github.com/ChromeDevTools/chrome-devtools-mcp/ https://github.com/ChromeDevTools/chrome-devtools-mcp/
  - raffraffraff 1y ago
    It's extremely handy too! If you try to use web automation tools like selenium or playwright on a website that blocks them, starting chrome browser with the debug port is a great way to get past Cloudflare's "human detector" before kicking off your automation. It's still a pain in the ass but at least it works and it's only once per session
    - wraptile 1y ago
      Note that while --remote-debugging-port itself cannot be discovered by cloudflare once you attach a client to it that can be detected as Chrome itself changes it's runtime to accomodate the connection even if you don't issue any automation commands. You need to patch the entire browser to avoid these detection methods and that's why there are so many web scraping/automation SAAS out there with their own browser versions as that's the only way to automate the web these days. You can't just connect to a consumer browser and automate undetected.
kristopolous 1y ago
I updated this thing that searches manpages better recently for the LLM era: https://github.com/day50-dev/Mansnip https://github.com/day50-dev/Mansnip wrapping this in an STDIO mcp is probably a smart move. I should just api-ify the code and include the server in the pip. How hard could this possibly be...
- lelandfe 1y ago
  You know, I have heard some countries are making mansnip illegal these days
- mac-attack 1y ago
  Definitely searched apt on Debian before I installed the pip pkg. On a somewhat related note, I also thought something broke when `uv tool install mansnip` didn't work.
  - kristopolous 1y ago
    Thanks I'll get on both of those. It's a minor project but I should make it work
the_real_cher 1y ago
It will navigate and know how to fill out forms?

lupusreal 1y ago

The light switch moment for me is when I realized I can tell claude to use linters instead of telling it to look for problems itself. The later generally works but having it call tools is way more efficient. I didn't even tell it what linters to use, I asked it for suggestions and it gave me about a dozen of suggestions, I installed them and it started using them without further instruction. I had tried coding with ChatGPT a year or so ago and the effort needed to get anything useful out of it greatly exceeded any benifit, so I went into CC with low expectations, but have been blown away.

fragmede 1y ago
The lightbulb moment for me was to have it make me a smoke test and to tell to run the test and fix issues (with the code it generated) until it passes. iterate over all features in the Todo.md (that I asked it to make). Claude code will go off and do stuff for I dunno, hours?, while I work on something else.
- peteybeachsand 1y ago
  genius i gotta try this
- joshstrange 1y ago
  Hours? Not in my experience. It will do a handful of tasks then say “Great! I’ve finished a block of tasks” and stop. and honestly, you’re gonna want to check its work periodically. You can’t even trust it to run litters and unit test reliably. I’ve lost count of how many times it’s skipped pre-commit checks or committed code with failing tests because it just gives up.
  - antonvs 1y ago
    I once had the Gemini CLI get into a loop of failures followed by self-flagellation where it ended saying something like "I'm sorry I have failed you, you should go and find someone capable of helping you."
    - visarga 1y ago
      I saw on X someone posted a screenshot where Gemini got depressed after repeated failure, apologized and actually uninstalled itself. Honorable seppuku.
- linhan_dot_dev 1y ago
  I've been using this method for several weeks. The issue I'm currently facing is that Claude Code incorrectly believes it has completed the task and then stops. Let me illustrate with a specific, simple example: fixing linter or compiler errors. The problems I solve with this method are all verifiable via the command line (this can usually be documented in CLAUDE.md). Claude Code will continuously adjust the code based on the linter's output until all errors are resolved. This process often takes quite some time. I typically do this after completing a feature development. If Claude Code mistakenly thinks it has finished the task during one of these checks, it will halt the entire process. I then have to restart it using the same prompt to continue the task. Therefore, I'm looking for an external tool to manage Claude Code. I haven't found one yet. I've seen some articles suggesting the use of a subagents approach, where tools like Gemini CLI or Codex could launch Claude Code. I haven't thoroughly explored this method yet.
maleldil 1y ago
I have a Just task that runs linters (ruff and pyright, in my case), formatter, tests and pre-commit hooks, and have Claude run it every time it thinks it's done with a change. It's good enough that when the checks pass, it's usually complete.
- simlevesque 1y ago
  A tip for everyone doing this: pipe the linters' stdout to /dev/null to save on tokens.
  - maleldil 1y ago
    Why? The agent needs the error messages from the linters to know what to do.
    - jamie_ca 1y ago
      If you're running linters for formatting etc, just get the agent to run them on autocorrect and it doesn't need to know the status as urgently.
      - maleldil 1y ago
        That's just one part of it. I want the LLM to see type checking errors, failing test outputs, etc.
        ozim 1y ago
        Errors shouldn’t be on stdout ;)
        dymk 1y ago
        “Errors” printed by your linter aren’t errors, they’re reports
        1y ago
libraryofbabel 1y ago
As an extension of this idea: for some tasks, rather than asking Claude Code to do a thing, you can often get better results from asking Claude Code to write and run a script to do the thing. Example: read this log file and extract XYZ from it and show me a table of the results. Instead of having the agent read in the whole log file into the context and try to process it with raw LLM attention, you can get it to read in a sample and then write a script to process the whole thing. This works particularly well when you want to do something with math, like compute a mean or a median. LLMs are bad at doing math on their own, and good at writing scripts to do math for them. A lot of interesting techniques become possible when you have an agent that can write quick scripts or CLI tools for you, on the fly, and run them as well.
- derefr 1y ago
  It's a bit annoying that you have to tell it to do it, though. Humans (or at least programmers) "build the tools to solve the problem" so intuitively and automatically when the problem starts to "feel hard", that it doesn't often occur to the average programmer that LLMs don't think like this. When you tell an LLM to check the code for errors, the LLM could simply "realize" that the problem is complex enough to warrant building [or finding+configuring] an appropriate tool to solve the problem, and so start doing that... but instead, even for the hardest problems, the LLM will try to brute-force a solution just by "staring at the code really hard." (To quote a certain cartoon squirrel, "that trick never works!" And to paraphrase the LLM's predictable response, "this time for sure!")
  - libraryofbabel 1y ago
    As the other commenter said, these days Claude Code often does actually reach for a script on its own, or for simpler tasks it will do a bash incantation with grep and sed. That is for tasks where a programmatic script solution is a good idea though. I don't think your example of "check the code for errors" really falls in that category - how would you write a script to do that? "Staring at the code really hard" to catch errors that could never have been caught with any static analysis tool is actually where an LLM really shines! Unless by "check for errors" you just meant "run a static analysis tool", in which case sure, it should run the linter or typechecker or whatever.
ozgrakkurt 1y ago
How is this better than calling `cargo clippy` or similar commands yourself?
- s900mhz 1y ago
  Claude can then proceed to fix the issues for you
  - mcqueenjordan 1y ago
    Presumably cargo clippy --fix was the intention. Not all things are fixable, though, which is where LLMs are reasonable for -- the squishy hard-to-autofix things.

hboon 1y ago

How does Claude Code use the browser in your script/tool? I've always wanted to control my existing Safari session windows rather than a Chrome or a separate/new Chrome instance.

wraptile 1y ago
Most browsers these days expose a control API (like ChromeDevtools Protocol MCP [1]) that open up a socket API and can take in json instructions for bidirectional communication. Chrome is the gold standard here but both Safari and Firefox have their own driver. For you existing browser session you'd have to start it already with open socket connection as by default that's not enabled but once you do the server should able to find an open local socket and connect to it and execute controls. worth nothing that this "control browser" hype is quite deceiving and it doesn't really work well imo because LLMs still suck at understanding the DOM so you need various tricks to optimize for that so I would take OP's claims with a giant bag of salt. Also these automations are really easy to identify and block as they are not organic inputs so the actual use is very limited. - https://github.com/ChromeDevTools/chrome-devtools-mcp/ https://github.com/ChromeDevTools/chrome-devtools-mcp/
- raffraffraff 1y ago
  It's extremely handy too! If you try to use web automation tools like selenium or playwright on a website that blocks them, starting chrome browser with the debug port is a great way to get past Cloudflare's "human detector" before kicking off your automation. It's still a pain in the ass but at least it works and it's only once per session
  - wraptile 1y ago
    Note that while --remote-debugging-port itself cannot be discovered by cloudflare once you attach a client to it that can be detected as Chrome itself changes it's runtime to accomodate the connection even if you don't issue any automation commands. You need to patch the entire browser to avoid these detection methods and that's why there are so many web scraping/automation SAAS out there with their own browser versions as that's the only way to automate the web these days. You can't just connect to a consumer browser and automate undetected.

kristopolous 1y ago

I updated this thing that searches manpages better recently for the LLM era: https://github.com/day50-dev/Mansnip https://github.com/day50-dev/Mansnip wrapping this in an STDIO mcp is probably a smart move. I should just api-ify the code and include the server in the pip. How hard could this possibly be...

lelandfe 1y ago
You know, I have heard some countries are making mansnip illegal these days
mac-attack 1y ago
Definitely searched apt on Debian before I installed the pip pkg. On a somewhat related note, I also thought something broke when `uv tool install mansnip` didn't work.
- kristopolous 1y ago
  Thanks I'll get on both of those. It's a minor project but I should make it work

the_real_cher 1y ago

It will navigate and know how to fill out forms?