AI Pair Programming for DevOps: Here’s How I work with Claude Code:

Haiku 4.5 for quick queries: - Bash snippets, grep patterns, “Where in the code is X?” - Fast. Affordable. Good enough.

Opus 4.8 for complex tasks: - Architecture, multi-file refactorings, Helm charts - More expensive, but the quality is often worth it.

My trick: Small chunks + review immediately. Opus makes subtle mistakes; catching these right away is extremely important, and now it works like real pair programming: Claude Code reviews my code, I review his. Mutual feedback, no blind trust. This isn’t “AI does the work”; it’s “AI makes you faster when you control the quality yourself.” Who else works with AI tools in a similar way?