1) Summarize what I think my project currently does
2) Summarize what I think it should do
3) Give a couple of hints about how to do it
4) Watch it iterate a write-compile-test loop until it thinks it's ready
I haven't added any files or instructions anywhere, I just do that loop above. I know of people who put their Claude in YOLO mode on multiple sessions, but for the moment I'm just sitting there watching it.
Example:
"So at the moment, we're connecting to a websocket and subscribing to data, and it works fine, all the parsing tests are working, all good. But I want to connect over multiple sockets and just take whichever one receives the message first, and discard subsequent copies. Maybe you need a module that remembers what sequence number it has seen?"
Claude will then praise my insightful guidance and start making edits.
At some point, it will do something silly, and I will say:
"Why are you doing this with a bunch of Arc<RwLock> things? Let's share state by sharing messages!"
Claude will then apologize profusely and give reasons why I'm so wise, and then build the module in an async way.
I just keep an eye on what it tries, and it's completely changed how I code. For instance, I don't need to be fully concentrated anymore. I can be sitting in a meeting while I tell Claude what to do. Or I can be close to falling asleep, but still be productive.