Programmers will document for Claude, but not for each other

Programmers will create documents for the cloud, but not for each other

A few days ago I mentioned a common complaint:

I keep seeing programmers saying how annoying it makes them that people are willing to write detailed CLAUDE.md And PROJECT.md files for cloud use, but they were unwilling to write them for their coworkers.

For larger projects, I’ve decided to have Claude maintain a handoff document that I can ask Claude to read next, detailing what we plan to do, what has been done, and other relevant information. Then when I close one cloud I can tell the next one to read the file to get the speed up. Then I have cloud !!n+1!! It is called cloud !!n+2!! Update for.

After seeing General Complaint several times, I had a pleasant inspiration. I was throwing handoff documents into the cloud at the end of each project. Why do they do this? Copying the file to the repository and committing it is no hassle. Anyone in the future wondering what’s going on may luckily find the right document git
grep And learn something useful.

I’m a bit slow so it took me until this week to think of a better version of this: At the end of the project I now ask Cloud to write a detailed but high-level explanation of what problem we were solving and what changes we made, and I commit. He. Not just running notes, but a structured overview of the whole thing.

I review these observations carefully and make edits as necessary before checking them. This is my signature on the commitment, and I get a pay check into my bank account, so nothing goes into the repository that I haven’t carefully read and understood, as if the cloud were a human programmer under my supervision.

But Cloud’s explanations don’t need much editing. Cloud’s most recent project summary was as good as I could have written myself, maybe a little worse and maybe a little better. But it took ten seconds instead of an hour to write, and nothing like an hour to review.

The serious thing I had to fix last time was that Cloud used a previous, related report as a model, and the previous report had a paragraph I added to the end that said:

# approved by

Claude separated these notes from our discussion on the issue. Mark Dominus has read, reviewed, edited, and approved these notes.

There was a similar section at the end of Cloud’s new document. Oops! Luckily, by the time I saw it, it was true, so I didn’t have to delete it. I asked Claude to add a sentence CLAUDE.md To tell him not to do it again.

My advice for today:

1. If you have notes written by the cloud, check them into the repo when you’re done. It probably can’t hurt and it might help.

2. Ask Cloud to write a project summary and then check it into the repo.

Maybe this is obvious? But it was not clear to me. I’m still getting used to this new world.

[Other articles in category /tech/gpt]

permanent link