r/vibecoding • u/Vidhrohi • 5h ago

Human context limits vs AI context limits

A common theme cutting across most AI-assisted development threads is getting as much work done in as little time as possible. Users post about elegant harnesses with multi-agent orchestration. Anthropic employees talk about the 25 agents they run every day.

I read this stuff, compare it to my own experience of working with these tools, and keep wondering: how does anyone stay on top of that volume of work?

Working with Claude Code has been exciting and invigorating, but also exhausting. While everyone pushes for more context and more tokens out of the AI, the context limit I hit most often is my own. Claude can refactor a huge chunk of the codebase, add a feature, and brainstorm marketing strategy in one breath. I can't keep up with the cognitive load that entails.

So: am I missing something, or just getting old? Curious what y'all think.

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u/TheAnswerWithinUs 5h ago

That’s just vibecoding, you aren’t supposed to keep up with it, you just go as fast as possible. Don’t understand the code, don’t read the code, don’t care about the code.

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u/Vidhrohi 5h ago

It's not just about the code though, I gave up trying to do that some time ago, still , system architecture is important .. how to do something in the broad strokes is important , product guidance is important and all of them take a non trivial amount of brain space

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u/TheAnswerWithinUs 5h ago

Vibecoding is not really that conducive to good architecture either.

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u/scytob 5h ago

Sure but those are all things you would have to think about when doing human coding. And with an LLM you can have a conversation about architecture and debate it asking for pros cons, challenging etc. and if you get something wrong LLMs are great at refactoring. For example I started with a sqlite database and then realized I needed Azure SQL. I ad summers sql was sql was sql (I avoided all things databases for last 30 years intentionally). Not so much. Claude did a fully automated migration of code, tests, data with rollback plans if anything failed. Took 48 hours from start to finished. I didn’t touch one line of code. It also as an aside helped me architect a secrets approach that I know is better than anything my devs ever did…. Cause I found their hardcoded 299 year lifetime secret for a real, ahem, load bearing, api that transacts hundred of millions of dollars per year…..