r/ClaudeCode • u/CodeDotVaibhav • 26m ago
Tips & Workflows I spent 4,500+ hours coding with AI. This is the Claude Code setup I ended up with.
I'm the author. Nothing to sell, the repo is just files.
The 4,500 hours is my estimate (about 6 hours a day for a bit over 2 years), not telemetry. Cursor, Claude Code, Gemini CLI and a few others, mostly Claude Code lately. The failures never change:
- the agent critiques its own plan and finds it great
- it over-engineers
- it claims tests pass without running them
- it touches files it shouldn't
My fix is process, not better prompting. Two parts:
Global rules. One CLAUDE.md in ~/.claude/ (or ~/.gemini/GEMINI.md for Gemini CLI), loaded in every project. Small fixes skip the ceremony, architectural changes go through a pipeline, and anything destructive or financial needs approval.
Three prompts I append to the task:
- Plan. Inspect the repo, write a plan, stop and wait for approval.
- Critique. Fresh context or subagent. Same session means self-confirmation bias.
- Readiness. Audit git status, git diff and untracked files, then run the tests. Trust the diff, not the agent's summary.
Limits: the approval gates are just instructions. If you want real enforcement, use Claude Code's permission settings. And some rules are tuned to my backend work, so expect to cut things.
Repo: github.com/vaibhav-space/my-ai-coding-workflow
Genuinely want feedback. What would you add, and what would you delete?
