The lightbulb moment for me was to have it make me a smoke test and to tell to run the test and fix issues (with the code it generated) until it passes. iterate over all features in the Todo.md (that I asked it to make). Claude code will go off and do stuff for I dunno, hours?, while I work on something else.
Hours? Not in my experience. It will do a handful of tasks then say “Great! I’ve finished a block of tasks” and stop. and honestly, you’re gonna want to check its work periodically. You can’t even trust it to run litters and unit test reliably. I’ve lost count of how many times it’s skipped pre-commit checks or committed code with failing tests because it just gives up.
I once had the Gemini CLI get into a loop of failures followed by self-flagellation where it ended saying something like "I'm sorry I have failed you, you should go and find someone capable of helping you."
I saw on X someone posted a screenshot where Gemini got depressed after repeated failure, apologized and actually uninstalled itself. Honorable seppuku.
genius i gotta try this