3 ms·

Running Claude Code in a loop to mirror human development practices

51 points by Kerrick 10mo ago

yellow_lead 10mo ago
> This all started because I was contractually obligated to write unit tests for a codebase with hundreds of thousands of lines of code and go from 0% to 80%+ coverage in the next few weeks - seems like something Claude should do. Is your client ok with this? Are the tests any good?
- greenavocado 10mo ago
  If left to its own devices, Claude will resort to writing passable looking BS as tests pretty quickly when the going gets tough e.g. if it has to interface with stateful real world systems and its tests struggle to pass
  - tough 10mo ago
    claude is like an intern, someone has to code review and approve before final delivery imho
    - 112233 10mo ago
      While I agree with the sentiment, you are being to generous. Claude is like a new intern every 15..30 minutes, or however long it takes to fill the context. "Oh, I know what is the issue, let me delete this code for now" and proceeds to nuke the fix it spent last context window making. No intern can be that malicious.
  - botanical76 10mo ago
    This is my experience as well. If you want it to write good tests, you have to take a much more involved approach of first making it establish what needs testing in each module, writing each test one at a time, and making it prove that it can break the test by modifying the source code to introduce a bug, modify the test to be appropriate, rinse and repeat. I haven't done this much because it's very expensive in terms of time and premium tokens...right now, I just write most tests myself so at least I have faith in the verification suite.
- bamboozled 10mo ago
  Honestly, this is crazy. I have to laugh…
kachapopopow 10mo ago
https://github.com/DeprecatedLuke/claude-loop https://github.com/DeprecatedLuke/claude-loop seems relevant
CharlesW 10mo ago
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/tree/main/plugins/ralph-wiggum https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/tree/main/plugins/... "The technique is named after Ralph Wiggum from The Simpsons, embodying the philosophy of persistent iteration despite setbacks."
ParanoidShroom 10mo ago
Lol I've done exactly the same thing past 3 weeks with a python script. Tests are okayish, it's very exhausting spending hours just reviewing tho.

51 points by Kerrick 10mo ago

> This all started because I was contractually obligated to write unit tests for a codebase with hundreds of thousands of lines of code and go from 0% to 80%+ coverage in the next few weeks - seems like something Claude should do. Is your client ok with this? Are the tests any good?

greenavocado 10mo ago
If left to its own devices, Claude will resort to writing passable looking BS as tests pretty quickly when the going gets tough e.g. if it has to interface with stateful real world systems and its tests struggle to pass
- tough 10mo ago
  claude is like an intern, someone has to code review and approve before final delivery imho
  - 112233 10mo ago
    While I agree with the sentiment, you are being to generous. Claude is like a new intern every 15..30 minutes, or however long it takes to fill the context. "Oh, I know what is the issue, let me delete this code for now" and proceeds to nuke the fix it spent last context window making. No intern can be that malicious.
- botanical76 10mo ago
  This is my experience as well. If you want it to write good tests, you have to take a much more involved approach of first making it establish what needs testing in each module, writing each test one at a time, and making it prove that it can break the test by modifying the source code to introduce a bug, modify the test to be appropriate, rinse and repeat. I haven't done this much because it's very expensive in terms of time and premium tokens...right now, I just write most tests myself so at least I have faith in the verification suite.
bamboozled 10mo ago
Honestly, this is crazy. I have to laugh…

kachapopopow 10mo ago

https://github.com/DeprecatedLuke/claude-loop https://github.com/DeprecatedLuke/claude-loop seems relevant

CharlesW 10mo ago

https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/tree/main/plugins/ralph-wiggum https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/tree/main/plugins/... "The technique is named after Ralph Wiggum from The Simpsons, embodying the philosophy of persistent iteration despite setbacks."

ParanoidShroom 10mo ago

Lol I've done exactly the same thing past 3 weeks with a python script. Tests are okayish, it's very exhausting spending hours just reviewing tho.