I've been working with Claude Code daily for a month or so. It is quite excellent and better than the other agents I have used (Cursor, Q). This article has some good tips that echo some of the things I have learned.
Some additional thoughts:
- I like to start with an ideation session with Claude in the web console. I explain the goals of the project, work through high level domain modeling, and break the project down into milestones with a target releasable goal in mind. For a small project, this might be a couple hours of back and forth. The output of this is the first version of CLAUDE.md.
- Then I start the project with Claude Code, have it read my global CLAUDE.md and the project CLAUDE.md and start going. Each session begins this way.
- I have Claude Code update the project CLAUDE.md as it goes. I have it mark its progress through the plan as it goes. Usually, at the end of the session, I will have it rewrite a special section that contains its summary of the project, how it works, and how to navigate the code. I treat this like Claude's long term memory basically. I have found it helps a lot.
- Even with good guidelines, Claude seems to have a tendency to get ahead of itself. I like to keep it focused and build little increments as I would myself if it is something I care about. If its just some one off or prototype, I let it go crazy and churn whatever works.
Does the $20 subscription hold a similar bang for your buck as cursor?
I’m curious about the tool but I wonder if it requires more significant investment to be a daily driver.
> Does the $20 subscription hold a similar bang for your buck as cursor?
Not sure about cursor. But if you want to use Claude Code daily for more than 2-3hrs/day, the $20 plan will feel limiting
In my experience, the $100 plan is pretty good, although you still run into the rate limits if you use it for a long time everyday (especially if you use Opus, which seems to run out in the first 30min of usage)
Using claude code feels like pairing with another programmer. Cursor feels like a polished extension of the IDE. They are both good tools and easily worth $20/mo. I think Anthropic has a 7 day free trial going on. Worth trying it out.
Do you use Claude code on the side and have you ide open to visualize the files and project structure and stuff?
I've been using only cursor for now and I really like having it in the ide. Being able to see the diffs and accept/ reject them and navigate my codebase is really nice.
Agreed. For those who don’t know btw, Claude Code has an official VS Code extensiob that does pretty much exactly that.
No. If you want use Claude anything serious, you will need the 200/month subscription. I have tried them all and you will run out of Opus too quickly with the lesser ones on a daily basis.
I have the opposite experience (although with sonnet) - I have to recklessly instruct Claude to make super verbose tool calls to even get close to chewing through enough tokens to use up limit before the 5 hour reset period or whatever it is. I don’t find enough performance increase w opus to justify it.
I ran out of Opus this week in 2-3 hour of use with the 100/month sub. It was not particularly heavy use, either.