Extracted from Hacker News discussion on My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures (Story ID: 44596472)
1. CLAUDE.md Configuration & Project Setup
Essential CLAUDE.md Tips
From aschobel (302 points):
"Context is key, so it is also really helpful having a CLAUDE.md file; the /init command can create one for you."
From taude:
"Do you create the claude.md files at several levels of your folder structure, so you can teach it how to do different things? Configuring these default system prompts is required to get it to work well."
From graphememes:
"I have a claude.md at the root of every folder generally, outlined in piped text for minimal context addition about the rulesets for that folder, it always creates tests for what it's doing and is set to do so in a very specific folder in a very specific way."
From theshrike79:
"This is why you keep CLAUDE.md updated, there it'll write down what is where and other relevant info about the project. Then it doesn't need to feel (or rg) through the whole codebase."
Video Resources
From taude:
- Boris introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eBSHbLKuN0
- Summary: https://www.nibzard.com/claude-code/
2. Workflow Optimization Techniques
The TODO.md Method
From nico:
"I also keep a TODO.md file with a plan of everything I want to do for the current ticket/PR. I tell CC to keep track of things there. CC takes stuff from there, breaks it down into its own subset of tasks and when finished I tell it to update the TODO.md with the progress. I also tell it to stage files and create commits."
Time Management
From nzach:
"The quality of the generated code is inversely proportional to the time it take to generate it. If you let Claude Code work alone for more than 300 seconds you will receive garbage code. Take that as a hint, if it can't finish the task in this time it means you are asking too much. Break up your feature and try with a smaller feature."
Planning Mode Strategy
From aschobel:
"If you are going to use it for generation (writing code); plan mode is a must. Hit shift-tab twice."
From theshrike79:
"You also use plan mode to figure out the issue, write the implementation plan in a .md file. Clear context, enter act mode and tell it to follow the plan."
3. Advanced Techniques
Ultrathinking
From aschobel:
"Finally; I'm mostly using the claude 4 sonnet model, but make sure to tell it to 'ultrathink' (use those words); this means it can use more thinking tokens."
From poszlem:
"A lot of people have no idea that it recognizes different levels of reasoning and allocates a bigger number of 'thinking tokens' depending on what you ask (including using 'ultrathink' to max out the thinking budget)."
Reference: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/prompt-engineering/claude-4-best-practices
Custom Slash Commands
From ctoth:
"One trick I have gotten some milage out of was this: have Claude Code research Slash commands, then make a slash command to turn the previous conversation into a slash command."
Examples:
- https://github.com/ctoth/slashcommands/blob/master/make-command.md
- https://github.com/ctoth/slashcommands/blob/master/improve-command.md
Search Optimization
From wahnfrieden:
"One approach to improving CC's search is to use Repo Prompt https://repoprompt.com"
From manmal:
"Try giving it a repomap, eg by including it in CLAUDE.md. It should pull in less files (context) that way. Exactly telling it which files you suspect need editing also helps."
4. Managing Rate Limits
Subscription Strategies
From wahnfrieden:
"It is typical to buy 2-3 Max tier plans for sustained Opus use"
From cmrdporcupine:
"FWIW I went Claude Max after Pro, and the trick is to turn off Opus. If you do that you can pretty much use Sonnet all working day in a normal session. I don't personally find Opus that useful, and it burns through quota at 5x the speed of Sonnet."
Enterprise Solutions
From dukeyukey:
"You can use CC with AWS Bedrock, with all the centralised billing AWS offers. That's how my company handles it."
5. Alternative Models & Tools
Using Other Models with Claude Code
From Imanari:
"PSA: you can use CC with any model via https://github.com/musistudio/claude-code-router The recent Kimi-K2 supposedly works great."
From nikcub:
"Shout out to opencode: https://github.com/sst/opencode which supports all the models natively and attempts to do what CC does"
IDE Alternatives
From beyang:
"If you like Claude Code but either (1) prefer an agent that doesn't ask for review on each file edit or (2) miss the IDE for things like reviewing diffs, I'd humbly submit you try out Amp: https://ampcode.com"
6. Best Practices & Mindset
Treat It Like a Junior Developer
From ToJans:
"All in all, it's like a slightly autistic junior dev, so you need to be really explicit, but once it knows what to do, it's incredible."
From cmrdporcupine:
"You have to watch Claude Code like a hawk. Because it's inconsistent. It will cheat, give up, change directions, and not make it clear to you that is what it's doing. So, while it's not 'junior' in capabilities, it is definitely 'junior' in terms of your need as a 'senior' to thoroughly review everything it does."
Documentation & Testing
From _sharp:
"You should consider documenting your durability requirements, failure modes, important context related to the feature/component your working on, as you would a junior engineer. Then, you can re-use the context documents."
From simonw:
"Right, which is why having a comprehensive test suite is such an enormous unlock for this class of technology. If your tests are good, Claude Code can run them and use them to check it hasn't broken any distant existing behavior."
Verification
From jm4:
"You can tell Claude to verify its work. I'm using it for data analysis tasks and I always have it check the raw data for accuracy. It was a whole different ballgame when I started doing that."
7. Real-World Success Stories
Infrastructure Automation
From rtp4me (DevOps engineer since 1990):
"Here are some projects Claude has helped create:
- Apache Airflow 'DAG' to automate dumping data from on-prem PGSQL server to a cloud bucket
- Custom dashboard to correlate HAProxy server stats with run-time container hooks
- Billing summary for cloud provider - saved a few thousand $$ from unused resources
- Custom 'DB Rebuild' web app for non-technical DB team members"
Productivity Metrics
From swader999:
"My highest velocity was about 1.6 fib complexity points a day over thirty years, now it's 4.3 with Claude the last three weeks which is nuts."
Large-Scale Usage
From graphememes:
"I have about 60-70 different agent streams going at a time atm. Codebases sizes vary, the largest one right now is about 200m tokens (react, typescript, golang) in total and it does a good job."
8. Common Pitfalls to Avoid
Context Overload
From libraryofbabel:
"Your LLM (CC) doesn't have your whole codebase in context, so it can run off and make changes without considering that some remote area of the codebase are (subtly?) depending on the part that claude just changed."
Time Investment
From nzach:
"If you let Claude Code work alone for more than 300 seconds you will receive garbage code."
Over-reliance
From ModernMech:
"I thought this as well, but I just got burned in a way that caused me to lose so much time: I was feeling lazy and allowed AI to write some code for me... Weeks later I experienced a crash that I couldn't pinpoint. After hours of debugging, I eventually realized the culprit was that bit of code created by AI from weeks ago."
Conclusion
The HN community's experience with Claude Code reveals a tool that can dramatically boost productivity when used correctly. The key is treating it as a capable but inexperienced junior developer who needs clear guidance, constant supervision, and well-structured context. Success comes from breaking work into small chunks, maintaining comprehensive documentation, and always reviewing the output carefully.
As ookblah summarized:
"I feel like some kind of shill, but honestly i'm anywhere from 1.5x to 10x on certain tasks. the main benefit is that i can reduce a lot of cognitive load on tasks where they are either 1) exploratory 2) throwaway 3) boilerplate-ish/refactor type stuff."
The most successful users have developed systematic approaches to context management, task breakdown, and quality control - turning Claude Code from a mere code generator into a genuine productivity multiplier.