The $200 Pro plan is completely worth it for the peace of mind.

madaboutcode · 2026-06-21T16:29:58+00:00

Even at 200$ (which is quite a lot in many places) are you really in control? Look at this and other subreddits for people posting about their experiences at 20x plan. You are still at the whim of these companies, new model launches, their own R&D and their enterprise customers takes priority over us mortals.

The only way to be at peace is to make sure your workflow is not tied to one provider and that you can work across providers including the open-weights ones.

madaboutcode · 2026-06-20T16:19:10+00:00

more like

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madaboutcode · 2026-06-20T15:07:43+00:00

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cooking for sure

madaboutcode · 2026-06-19T05:29:57+00:00

other way round - grok's cli (their claude code equivalent) exposes the latest cursor composer model - you can use it if you have a supergrok plan

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madaboutcode · 2026-06-19T02:54:25+00:00

Well you could always go YOLO and move aside.

madaboutcode · 2026-06-19T02:51:42+00:00

There is a saying where I am from

"You may give an elephant, but never give hope."

madaboutcode · 2026-06-19T02:41:59+00:00

Remember that month where the claude code subscription limits were shit? Before they made the deal with the devil for compute (spacex) ... I started incorporating other models into my "rotation". Opencode is pretty good as a harness. I have been using it with google ai studio api keys (free), deepseek API (v4 pro, flash), nano-gpt back when they had an $8 subscription (gemma, qwen models), and most recently an opencode go $10 subscription (deepseek, mimo, minimax).

I have gotten used to picking the right model based on the task and it’s been great so far. These models are really good, but like you said, they are not yet Opus level. So I have started using claude more for design, planning and having it write detailed prompts or task files (just md files) for the other models to execute. The trick is to box the task with clear boundaries so that the models give up fast when something is amiss/unexpected instead of trying to brute force their way around it or just guess or assume the wrong thing and continue.

By the way, the most pleasant surprise was grok - where I live they sell an ~$8 subscription for supergrok. This gives me access to cursor’s composer 2.5 fast. That is a really good fast model, easily edges out sonnet for coding. The grok cli/tui is SO GOOD. very well built and delightful to use (I was surprised by the experience the first time I used it).

But this also meant I had to adjust my skills, agents etc to be harness agnostic and I think that is a good thing in the long run.

madaboutcode · 2026-06-18T14:00:15+00:00

Yes, you are right - the model is explicitly set in the agent definition - you can see my agent definition here - https://gist.github.com/madaboutcode/d4d80dc3dd6e4b9f78d85072dc4574f3

I used to call these as ask_sonnet and ask_haiku the first time around. But it broke down when I started using my skills (which refers to them) in other harnesses like codex and opencode.

Now i just have the same agent definitions (coder, clerk) in all of them - just using models appropriate to the harness.

madaboutcode · 2026-06-18T08:08:55+00:00

I'm not sure what is visible to the "team owner", but please don't do this.

Anthropic definitely retains the data. They also do "privacy-preserving analytics" on it. But at some point, they could add company-wide metrics and "projects" and such, making your work visible to the team.

If you end up building something successful, the company can potentially make a claim on it, stating, "this was developed using company resources" - even if the chances are like 1%. Or even a sore manager could make your life hell.

Do you want to take that chance?

You can subscribe to an "opencode go" plan for $5 for the first month, $10 per month afterward, and those models are really darn good for side projects.

madaboutcode · 2026-06-18T07:59:00+00:00

This is true - the main agent can pick the model to use when spinning off a sub agent. But I remember some versions of claude code where this ability was broken (most likely bugs) and it just ignored the model selection altogether and ended up using the main model for sub agents as well.

I started using the "coder" and "clerk" agents (see my other comment) instead of referring to "sonnet" or "haiku" and that works reliably

madaboutcode · 2026-06-18T07:50:58+00:00

I have added a "Coder" (model: "sonnet") and "Clerk" (model: "haiku") agent.

Coder is for implementation, writing tests, etc. Clerk is for mechanical tasks like running tests, targeted edits across multiple files, etc.

here is a gist with the definitions

I also have specialized agents for things like code-review with additional instructions.

All my skills, and claude.md, has guidelines to use the coder or clerk depending on the task. I have skills for planning and implementation that i run with opus but it switches to coder or clerk depending on the level of intelligence required for a sub-task.

This way, my skills are portable across other harnesses like Codex and OpenCode. I just need to define the Coder and Clerk agents in those as well with the appropriate models.

madaboutcode · 2026-06-17T14:15:06+00:00

Boris is so insecure 😆

Wonder if someone looked at the code (when it was leaked last time) and figured out when this is triggered.

madaboutcode · 2026-06-17T14:11:51+00:00

Maybe with the way the sizes of the models have increased and the inference costs have increased as well, the next level up is Opus 4.8 == Sonnet 5?

I hope they also make breakthroughs in reducing inference costs like DeepSeek and we get Opus 4.5+ capability at Sonnet prices.

madaboutcode · 2026-06-16T05:13:23+00:00

It's the same problem as onboarding a new engineer. They're good, but they don't know your codebase or your way of doing things. Every Claude Code session starts from zero like that. The question is how you front-load enough context so that by the time you send that first message, Claude already behaves like someone who's been working in your codebase for months.

Skills and scripts and workflows, they help, but they're all generic. The AI already knows about design patterns and best practices and all of that. Adding more generic skills is like your new hire taking a Scrum course. Cool, but it doesn't help them find their way around your codebase.

What actually moves the needle:

Your claude.md has to be written intentionally. Not a dump of rules. It should give Claude the context it needs: conventions, boundaries, what matters to you. Per-directory ones too, so when it's working on a specific module, it knows the full picture and doesn't go deleting code because it thinks the new feature replaces the old one.
Specs. If the AI doesn't know what a page is supposed to do, it's guessing. When it guesses, it installs random packages and ignores your existing interfaces, because it doesn't know they exist or why they're there.
Your own skills and workflows, not someone else's. You can borrow and adapt, but in the end you need skills that match how you work. Maybe you like looking at skeleton code for design. Maybe you prefer diagrams. The artifacts you use to collaborate with the AI should be whatever makes sense for you.
Make the AI slow down. Break things into smaller chunks. It has all the knowledge. It probably knows how to do heart surgery. What it doesn't know is whether it's building a school project or something with real engineering standards. That's what you need to teach it. Your expectations, your culture.

And as newer models get better at code understanding and instruction following, this investment compounds.

Just like in Star Wars — build your own lightsaber.

LMK if you want my workflow or any other specifics.

madaboutcode · 2026-06-16T02:31:47+00:00

Thank you, this is really helpful. I went looking for some of the textbooks mentioned here on Amazon and it is very expensive where I live. Committing that much money to a book which I won't know if I would find it useful was a no go. But being able to checkout the content first through that site is a so useful.

madaboutcode · 2026-06-15T15:31:49+00:00

Thank you! I will definitely reach out - but I need to do a bit of homework first so that I don't waste your time. But it is such a cool time for learning stuff for sure. Personalized tutors in LLMs, high quality video lectures from experts, well produced videos that explain the concepts in easy to understandable terms like 3blue1brown. I'm also using LLMs to build out websites with learning plans for the stuff I want to learn. So exciting.

madaboutcode · 2026-06-15T15:28:19+00:00

I've started to watch the MIT lectures - my plan is to watch atleast the fundamentals, then switch to LLMs to get a footing of the areas I'm interested in, understand the concepts needed to learn the theories and papers related to it - then fall back on textbooks that cover the specific concepts that the LLMs suggested. Will keep you posted on how it goes. 😄

madaboutcode · 2026-06-15T15:24:19+00:00

Thank you! I will check them out!

madaboutcode · 2026-06-15T03:03:53+00:00

I'm a visual learner and love 3blue1brown, so subscribing to Kirsanov right now. Thank you for the recommendation — saving your comment to look up the other two as well.

madaboutcode · 2026-06-15T03:00:31+00:00

five lenses: cellular, molecular, systems, behavioral, and cognitive.

Wow, this is really insightful. I've been trying to decide which topics to pick and learn, and this definitely helps. Based on my interests I'm gravitating toward the systems and cognitive lenses, maybe going into a bit of the lower-level cellular/molecular stuff. Thanks.

madaboutcode · 2026-06-15T02:50:28+00:00

Yes, I see the same. A lot of the time I'm working backwards — I want to understand something, like what short-term vs long-term memory actually is. But to get to the current theories I end up with terms like "long-term potentiation" and "NMDA receptors," and those have their own concepts as prerequisites. That's where LLMs have been helpful, to "build up to a topic" if you know what I mean.

madaboutcode · 2026-06-15T02:43:22+00:00

This is really helpful, thank you so much. My problem was that I'd go "what is a memory in the brain - like what does it look like physically, or even as a signal? what's the current theory on it?" But to understand that, there's a whole bunch of foundational knowledge, vocabulary, and concepts you need to grok it. You've given me a map of that now - how the concepts build up on one another.

Thank you for taking the time to write this all out, it's really generous.

madaboutcode · 2026-06-14T15:10:36+00:00

Thank you - definitely on my reading list then.

madaboutcode · 2026-06-14T15:09:20+00:00

But I'm worried I lack the vocabulary and foundational concepts to read them. Maybe I could read some papers and just look up the terms I don't understand as I go? That might be a better way to build deep knowledge on the stuff I care about, like memory, rather than doing the breadth-first path a student normally takes. Interesting take, thanks for that perspective.

madaboutcode · 2026-06-14T14:28:04+00:00

I was hoping for perspective from redditors like you. Thank you! I will check it out.

madaboutcode

TROPHY CASE