3 ms·

> You have to experience it yourself on your own real problems and over the course of days or weeks. How do you stop it from over-engineering everything?

petcat 10mo ago
This has always been my problem whether it's Gemini, openai or Claude. Unless you hand-hold it to an extreme degree, it is going to build a mountain next to a molehill. It may end up working, but the thing is going to convolute apis and abstractions and mix patterns basically everywhere
- jama211 10mo ago
  Not in my experience - you need to build the fact that you don’t want it to do that into your design and specification.
  - petcat 10mo ago
    Sure, I can tell it not to do that, but it doesn't know what that is. It's a je ne sais quoi. I can't teach it taste.
    - dflock 10mo ago
      Recent Claude will just look at your code and copy what you've been doing, mostly, in an existing codebase - without being asked. In a new codebase, you can just ask it to "be conscice, keep it simple" or something.
    - jama211 10mo ago
      The trick isn’t to tell it what not to do, it’s to tell it what to do. And give it examples and requirements.
- spaceman_2020 10mo ago
  It's very good at following instructions. You can build dedicated agents for different tasks (backend, API design, database design) and make it follow design and coding patterns. It's verbose by default but a few hours of custom instructions and you can make it code just like anyone
  - svieira 10mo ago
    > just like anyone Arthur Whitney? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Whitney_(computer_scientist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Whitney_(computer_scien...
    - jama211 10mo ago
      Sure why not
s-macke 10mo ago
Difficult and it really depends on the complexity. I definitely work in a spec-driven way, with a step-by-step implementation phase. If it goes the wrong way I prefer to rewrite the spec and throw away the code.
myvoiceismypass 10mo ago
I personally try to narrow scope as much as possible to prevent this. If a human hands me a PR that is not digestible size-wise and content-wise (to me), I am not reviewing and merging it. Same thing with what claude generates with my guidance.
ryanchants 10mo ago
I have it propose several approaches, pick and choose from each, and remove what I don't want done. "Use the general structure of A, but use the validation structure of D. Using a view translation layer is too much, just rely on FastAPI/SQLModel's implicit view conversion."
- dbbk 10mo ago
  The Plan mode already does this, it makes multiple plans and then synthesises them
bdangubic 10mo ago
“Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler” should be the ending of every prompt :)
verdverm 10mo ago
Instructions, in the system prompt for not doing that Once more people realize how easy it is to customize and personalized your agent, I hope they will move beyond what cookie cutter Big AI like Anthropic and Google give you. I suspect most won't though because (1) it means you have to write human language, communication, and this weird form of persuasion, (2) ai is gonna make a bunch of them lazy and big AI sold them on magic solutions that require no effort on your part (not true, there is a lot of customizing and it has huge dividends)

petcat 10mo ago

This has always been my problem whether it's Gemini, openai or Claude. Unless you hand-hold it to an extreme degree, it is going to build a mountain next to a molehill. It may end up working, but the thing is going to convolute apis and abstractions and mix patterns basically everywhere

jama211 10mo ago
Not in my experience - you need to build the fact that you don’t want it to do that into your design and specification.
- petcat 10mo ago
  Sure, I can tell it not to do that, but it doesn't know what that is. It's a je ne sais quoi. I can't teach it taste.
  - dflock 10mo ago
    Recent Claude will just look at your code and copy what you've been doing, mostly, in an existing codebase - without being asked. In a new codebase, you can just ask it to "be conscice, keep it simple" or something.
  - jama211 10mo ago
    The trick isn’t to tell it what not to do, it’s to tell it what to do. And give it examples and requirements.
spaceman_2020 10mo ago
It's very good at following instructions. You can build dedicated agents for different tasks (backend, API design, database design) and make it follow design and coding patterns. It's verbose by default but a few hours of custom instructions and you can make it code just like anyone
- svieira 10mo ago
  > just like anyone Arthur Whitney? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Whitney_(computer_scientist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Whitney_(computer_scien...
  - jama211 10mo ago
    Sure why not

s-macke 10mo ago

Difficult and it really depends on the complexity. I definitely work in a spec-driven way, with a step-by-step implementation phase. If it goes the wrong way I prefer to rewrite the spec and throw away the code.

myvoiceismypass 10mo ago

I personally try to narrow scope as much as possible to prevent this. If a human hands me a PR that is not digestible size-wise and content-wise (to me), I am not reviewing and merging it. Same thing with what claude generates with my guidance.

ryanchants 10mo ago

I have it propose several approaches, pick and choose from each, and remove what I don't want done. "Use the general structure of A, but use the validation structure of D. Using a view translation layer is too much, just rely on FastAPI/SQLModel's implicit view conversion."

dbbk 10mo ago
The Plan mode already does this, it makes multiple plans and then synthesises them

bdangubic 10mo ago

“Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler” should be the ending of every prompt :)

verdverm 10mo ago

Instructions, in the system prompt for not doing that Once more people realize how easy it is to customize and personalized your agent, I hope they will move beyond what cookie cutter Big AI like Anthropic and Google give you. I suspect most won't though because (1) it means you have to write human language, communication, and this weird form of persuasion, (2) ai is gonna make a bunch of them lazy and big AI sold them on magic solutions that require no effort on your part (not true, there is a lot of customizing and it has huge dividends)