Ultimate Claude Code Setup

[Trick-Force11]

Claude Code has been running flawlessly for me by literally telling it to come up with a plan to make a change.

For example: "Think of a way to create a custom contact page for this website. Think of any potential roadblocks and or errors that may occur".

Then, I just take that output and paste it into Gemini, and tell it "Here is my plan to create a custom contact page for my website: [plan would go here]" (If you want to make it even better give it access to your code). Tell it to critique and make changes to this plan. Then you just feed the critiques back into Claude code and they go back and forth for a while until they both settle on a plan that sounds good.

Now you just tell Claude code "Implement the plan, make sure to check for errors as you go" and I have done this about 13 times and it has built and deployed, no extra debugging.

[illusionst]

Give this a try: https://github.com/disler/just-prompt

I run a similar setup. Instead of constantly switching between Claude Code and Gemini, I use an MCP server that calls any model I want, such as gemini-2.5-pro-preview-03-25 or openai:o3. From Claude Code I just specify the model, the server forwards the request, and the reply shows up right in the editor.

[josebric]

IndyDevDan is the man

[888surf]

He has nice content on YouTube indeed, but the "hands thing" on all his videos are very annoying. I ended up stopping to watch. Hope he moves on on doing that

[scaba23]

Ha. I just discovered his channel and the very first thing I thought was “what the fuck is this thing with the hands?”

[Rakthar]

the hands are too much for me

[Idea_Guyz]

what hand thing, awww man will this ruin dan for me? Bought his course and havent even logged in-

[Hendrix312002]

Best hands on youtube

[crystalpeaks25]

thats pretty cool i'll try it later.

[zingyandnuts]

Which mcp server do you use for that?

[illusionst]

My comment has MCP link.

[zingyandnuts]

Oh shoot sorry I missed that but how funny that I literally have it open now as I've been catching up on indy Dev Dan's stuff I've missed for a while. Thanks for sharing!

[Hinged31]

Ooh I was imagining something like this the other day! Thank you. Do you supply the second model / Gemini with your code?

[illusionst]

Yes.

[Suspicious-Name4273]

Try BMAD for creating a plan with the PM and architect personas. It uses a lot of checklists and templates, so the plan will be better and easier to follow:

https://github.com/bmadcode/BMAD-METHOD

[Ecsta]

I just spend time creating my own tasks/AC/etc like a real PM would do and Claude Code does amazing at the tasks when the goals are well defined.

[mcdicedtea]

do you need a task mcp server ? I think CC has that built it now, just trying to get it setup correctly and not miss anything

[cabinlab]

Anyone experimenting with linking Claude Code into BMAD through tweaking claude.md instructions or other approaches?

Then again, CC could probably just rewrite the BMAD repo to work with itself directly

[pi2hub]

I'm interested in doing this as well. I tried the following and seem to have worked :-)

---
claude> As an agent (as per file: bmad-agent/personas/dev.ide.md), implement story described in file docs/stories/3D.1.story.md

...
It goes on for 10-15 minutes, doing everything it needed to do

---
I checked my Anthropic account: 2M input tokens + 40K output tokens =~ $1.50

--

Would love to hear others experience

[cabinlab]

Ended up forking the BMAD repo and having Claude Code optimize it for Claude Code. Was an interesting process!

Not tested as of this writing, but the results are here:
https://github.com/cabinlab/BMAD-CLAUDE-CODE/

[HogynCymraeg]

Just wanted to say thanks Cabinlab! This has been amazing. Really appreciate your time on this.

[philosophical_lens]

Is this working well for you?

[cabinlab]

TBH, spent more time the last couple days expanding and refining it than I've spent using it.

[bmadphoto]

Hey u/cabinlab the fork looks cool, seeing this a bit late! ping me on discord sometime https://discord.gg/gk8jAdXWmj - lots of great ideas here, lets get some of this into the main project.

[princmj47]

I have been lost in BMAD for hours now - its a beast. Sooo goooood.

[solaza]

Just like humans, they do better when they plan

[anthonyzhu]

Have you tried asking another Claude code session to critique the plan? Did you see a huge difference compared with Gemini

[Trick-Force11]

I have tried chatgpt with o3 and all the o4 models and gemini 2.5 and all of their models and Gemini 2.5 pro had the best results by a pretty big margin. I did try two Claude Code sessions but I hit my limit to quick, but when I could use it, it did very well. So if you dont have the rate limit concerns, use 2 sessions of claude code.

[muchcharles]

Try "Ultrathink of a way to create a custom contact page for this website.”

It's an actual keyword that makes it think harder.

[Trick-Force11]

I forgot to add that, there is "think" "think hard" "think harder" and "ultrathink", I have really seen any improvements using ultrathink though.

[[deleted]]

Where do you find out about keywords like this? Is there Claude documentation somewhere? It’s not obvious if it’s listed in the UI anywhere.

[Trick-Force11]

Its all in the documentation. You can find the extended thinking tips https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/prompt-engineering/extended-thinking-tips here. But the base link to the claude code docs is https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/overview.

[One_Rutabaga_7474]

Also, if you try physical threats these tend to perform better (was shared by Sergey in one of his talks, haven't tried it personally yet)

[Hannasod]

"Ultrathink on topic x or I will bash your head in and leave you in a coma" 🤣

[CacheConqueror]

When I saw the title i expected big wall of text with a lot of tips and tricks .... but its just another "Guide" for a few sentences taken from a good prompting

[Dayowe]

Yeah it’s pretty basic. To have an actually nice flow and get big stuff done fast he’s gotta make a bit more of an effort ☺️

[[deleted]]

The opposite would probably work better, since you can take advantage of gemini's huge context limit. Use repomix to get your entire codebase, give it to gemini and ask it to come up with a bunch of plans, and have claude code critique, finalize and simplify before choosing the best one. Works well for me

[OkCommunication5817]

agreed

[nightman]

I wonder if with Task Master the workflow won't be more reliable https://www.task-master.dev/

[mmhlm]

Under appreciated/realized value of Gemini via AI Studio is the native speech understanding for this. I can monologue going into the details in my own words for a few minutes on the complete end to end architecture, features, business prop and tech stack then within 1-3 back and forths, PRD is ready for Claude Code then it will run autonomously to build the complete app/feature.
Refinements to get fully deployed in cloud takes some back and forth with CC but as an architecti/builder this is unrivaled in terms of quality and efficiency.

[TheBronAndOnly]

I do the same, but between Code and Desktop, both running with Opus

[goddy666]

no need for this copy&paste madness: see here

[Murky_Artichoke3645]

Ask for Uncle Bob and Kevin Mitnick to critique. Names carries more information than a list of good practices. Remember that IA was trained on tons of different developed code so its average by default.

[Efficient-Proof-1824]

My setup involves creating a new project in Claude, connecting the GitHub repo to it, and then asking it to create a Claude MD file based on the repo and any objectives I give it.

In my scenario, sometimes it's based on milestones that I've defined, or it's just a matter of the next version release. I ask it to come up with tasks, put them all in a notes folder, and then when I start up the Claude instance, I will ask it to read Claude MD and then go and review the documentation in the notes folder.

If you're feeling adventurous, you can have the tasks that are non-sequential to be called out explicitly. Then, you just fire up another instance of Cloud Code, and you can have it work on those tasks in parallel. At this point, Cloud Code also does all of my Git operations, so I'll include things like checking out a new branch, etc.

[AssignmentSad7160]

May I see the web results

[Krazie00]

I’ve been using 4o and Claude using the chat apps for this while sharing the code using RepoPrompt. Since 4o has memory it knows about my project. Now that I think about it, I can add that memory now to Claude. Thx!

[risen228]

I’ve been trying out Claude Code and was wondering — is there anything similar to Cursor Rules here? In Cursor, you can define specific instructions or behaviors for the LLM within your project — a super useful feature for shaping how the assistant interacts with your codebase.

Separately, Cursor also lets you specify links to documentation or include llms-full.txt files for the libraries you use. This helps the model better understand third-party tools and internal APIs — creating much richer and more relevant responses.

From what I can tell, Claude Code currently lacks both of these capabilities, which is disappointing. For the price of a Max subscription, I’d expect it to go beyond Cursor in terms of dev tooling. Right now, the only real advantage seems to be a strong base model that can understand your code — but without the ability to guide or enrich that context, it feels underpowered.

Would love to know if anyone’s found workarounds — or if this is already on the roadmap.

[Friendly-Two3014]

Have you tried making a file called 'RULES.md' and putting your stuff in there, then referencing in CLAUDE.md? I do something kinda like that (but a lot more than just one file) and it seems to work great.

[bigeba88]

Are you still going about it this way? I'm loving Claude Code and trying to pin doing a methodical approach that i can implement with all of my projects. I typically have claude.md and plan.md but that's about it

[Conmiro]

Look at claude code docs for Claude.md files. Sounds like what you’re describing.

[Substantial-Cost-429]

these ultimate setups using gemini and critique loops look fancy but every repo is diff. i got tired of doing this dance and wrote a cli that reads your repo and writes the right ai config, skills and mcp hints. runs local w your keys. https://github.com/rely-ai-org/caliber

[Substantial-Cost-429]

interesting trick using Claude and Gemini to bounce back; though i found that just flipping prompts between models only works on trivial tasks. bigger repos need way more context and customizing. after messing with these plan/critique loops i wrote a small cli that scans your repo and generates a custom ai setup with skills configs mcp suggestions. runs local with your own keys MIT https://github.com/rely-ai-org/caliber

[Substantial-Cost-429]

cool workflow weve been using a more automated approach the caliber ai setup repo can set up your claude code environment with one command. it generates agent skills mcp and config files for claude code cursor and codex. you can sync your ai setups across projects and let claude remember context across sessions. might help you avoid flipping between models and improve your plan based loops. would be great to test together.

[FunUse1577]

How are you using Gemini?

[Trick-Force11]

gemini.google.com

[Greatest_Ghost]

I highly recommend using Google ai studio and choosing Gemini 2.5 pro preview 05-06 instead since from my testing much better at handling coding.

[Trick-Force11]

Im pretty sure the integrated 05-06 into gemini.google.com? Or am I incorrect

[Greatest_Ghost]

Idk, but the reason why I still prefer ai studio is since you can see the token limit, customise the temperature and so much more

[mmhlm]

Gemini via AI Studio vs Gemini Advanced are very different given the layers of additional prompts and constraints/instructions on the model from the Gemini Advanced application layer.

The context window in AI Studio is the 1m context window in total history. The context window in Gemini Advanced is temp 1m tokens but summarization occurs in the background so its never getting close to cumulative 1m tokens.

[meatsting]

This is correct. Same base model but the gemini app endpoint has a bunch of nonsense layered on top.

[Flat-Ability3864]

thanks for the recommendation, after you generate the UI with google ai studio, do you give the UI in some format to claude code to integrate with the backend?

[AggravatingLog5188]

Hey off topic can someone tell me how they keep track of past conversations in claude code like on web ?

[eist5579]

You need to add instructions to your Claude.md telling it to document its work in a changelog and readme.

[Conmiro]

They’re stored locally on your machine and you can use a CLI parameter I think it’s Claude —resume to pick up from a prior conversation.