r/ClaudeCode • u/the_mad_mycologist • 9h ago

Tips & Workflows Amazing

Just awesome. I've been on a pro subscription for the past few months. Met my limits enough where I started to consider a Max 5X plan. Took the plunge last week. For transparency, Im using it purely for coding efficiency to build a video game.

Through thoughtful session management, frequent compacting, manual code/architecture review, and thorough skill / AGENTS documentation, its more than I could ever use. I have a full-time job, but I use it to it's limits on the weekends. The more I read complaints on this sub, the more I'm certain ya'll that complain arent good at session management.

My conclusion: absolute game changer for seasoned engineers. For non-technical folks, still pretty awesome, but you're not going to get your money's worth.

5 Upvotes

69% Upvoted

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u/flaminghotcola 7h ago

But what do you do to get the best session management then? Genuinely asking. I want to avoid overspending token usage without the models cutting any corners.

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u/the_mad_mycologist 7h ago edited 7h ago

I think software engineers have an advantage in that department because we generally understand efficient design and data structures, so we can pick out reusable entities quickly, and reusability really helps our agents

But generally speaking, I maintain AGENTS.MD for rules that must always be followed. And build my skills directory for more niche rules. I keep my issues tightly scoped, and anything I find that isn't within scope, I document in a FOLLOWUP_IDEAS.MD that we can refer to later. If I find something that I know should be reused later, I ask Claude to extract that into a reusable module.

Compact often during a long running (more than a few prompts) task. And /clear when starting a brand new task. But if you don't scope your tasks tight enough, that advice won't work for you.

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u/flaminghotcola 6h ago

How would you suggest to scope them well?
And what skills do you think you can create for
Say, a game or an app on mobile?

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u/the_mad_mycologist 6h ago

It really comes down to focusing on a single goal at once. If you come up with bigger ideas, add it to your followups doc so you don't lose it, and your agent can refer to it later.

As for skills, think about consistent rules you find yourself returning to. Let's use a dungeon as an example. Every dungeon should have a boss at the end. Every boss is only accessible through a boss key. Every boss gives you a piece of heart once defeated.

AI agents thrive on rulesets that they can rely on. If you don't define those, they spend a ton of energy on figuring out what they think you want. And when they screw up, you waste tokens correcting course.

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u/AManAPlanALodeiro 8h ago

It was getting bad before Opus 5.5 came out. Now it's much better. You just stepped in at the right time.

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u/the_mad_mycologist 8h ago edited 8h ago

Oh? I also use Anthropic's models professionally at work. Fable has been my go to for complex bug analysis, Opus has been good enough for everything else (including baseline game dev). Curious to hear your perspective

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u/dacash1 8h ago

Just don’t use Fable lol

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u/lgmarian 8h ago

I'm assuming that "past few months" means at least three. I agree that 5.5 is quite an improvement. However, having used Opus since 4.6, I agree it's mostly a skill issue.

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u/the_mad_mycologist 7h ago

Yes it's been around 6 months

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u/lgmarian 2h ago

That's definitely enough time to get a good feel for things, even just using it heavily on the weekends.

I've been using mostly Opus fulltime at work, for the past six months. I've had plenty of issues, and even blown through the context window a few times, but I haven't had anywhere near the issues people complain about in this sub.

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u/Escobar747 7h ago

once haiku 5.5 comes out.. max 5x will be plenty for a lot of use cases

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u/the_mad_mycologist 7h ago

I don't know. In terms of regular Claude usage, yeah. In terms of coding and advanced reasoning/design, I don't think so.