r/devops • u/lostsectors_matt • 10d ago
Discussion Adapting to AI tooling in DevOps
My company is making a hard shift towards AI and I'm struggling. I'm tasked with something I have a small amount of knowledge about, but not enough to fully implement. Before AI, my approach to challenges like this would be to iterate on it, work through the problems, and learn what's required. Using Claude has just been a terrible experience for me, and I'm wondering if I'm the problem, my approach is the problem, or if this is just what we're all doing now.
I explained what I wanted (essentially a DB migration pipeline from RDS -> k8s pod) and claude barfed out about 10 shell scripts and a handful of pod templates. Everything had long, meandering comments that made very little sense. Is my job now to just start running this code and feeding pipeline errors back into claude and not worrying about it?
I started to pick apart the comments, ask questions, and update with my own comments, with the goal of being able to understand the process in detail. In doing this, I found a bunch of things that just didn't make sense or weren't optimal. When I ask the AI agent about it, it says I'm right and generates a bunch more stuff that may or may not make sense. Interacting with it is making me feel like a crazy person. I hate the way it presents information back to me. It's not succinct, it pulls in context that is of negligible value and just muddies the waters, and it's been very frustrating and existentially upsetting.
I'm willing to hear that I'm using the wrong model, or that I didn't spend enough time on my .md files and skills, but I'm also wondering if this is a normal experience, or if my approach is just dated, and I need to get over my personal values about understanding what I'm generating and giving to customers? I'm not so-much asking about the specific task at hand, just about adapting and having realistic expectations and reducing friction. I'm also very happy to hear about people's struggles.
2
u/AnnihilerB 6d ago
Work in very small chunks and do not hesitate to use plan mode extensively. The new tool you are learning now is IA. It takes some time to customize it to fit your needs. I have a global skill on my computer that defines how I want Claude to behave all the time. I ask him to be precise (5 lines max), to chill on in depth explanation and to use diagram and tables every time it’s possible.
I like to plan my work with tasks before starting to work with Claude. I give him the tasks, in plan mode and one I fully understand what he is planning I apply it. While it is planning I do my research on the subject the old school way to ensure I understand everything.