Claude / AI coding tips

Note: How I work with AI/Claude is constantly changing so just keeping notes here to keep track of my workflow.

Main workflow

• Work in small iterations instead of trying to one-shot things. For example, ask Claude to implement a create record form without actually handling the submission. Once it’s done that, review the code and make changes if necessary. If all is good, ask it to create the submission logic. Keep working in small steps. This way, you don’t lose track of what the code does and neither do you get overwhelmed when you need to review a ton of code changes at once.
• Use the JetBrains’s Commit window to go through all the code changes one by one. You can use the up and down arrows to go back and forth between the changes.
• Treat Claude as a senior colleague who you’re pair-programming with. Talk to it like a human. Don’t feel like you always have to tell it what to do. Ask it for its opinion on how to do things when you’re unsure.

Custom skills

• See here

Misc tips

• You can use Vim mode.
• You can redirect Claude at any point without waiting for it to finish its current action by pressing Esc.
• Use /rewind to go back to an earlier point in your conversation.
• Use /doctor to get Claude to check your Claude setup and suggest improvements (e.g., suggest how you can trim your CLAUDE.md file).

TODO

• Experiment with using Fable more. If it can increase your output considerably, it’s well worth spending a couple of hundred pounds on it a month so you can get more of your time back.
• Add more skills (Ask Claude to add them)
  • Add a Claude skill to open Claude’s last output in the current IDE or in a online Markdown viewer.
  • Add a /codex-review skill which spins up Codex as a subagent, runs a code review of the current changes / last commit and reports them back to Claude.
  • Add a /review-and-commit skill which runs Codex as a subagent, reviews the code and then only commits if there are no issues.
  • Move website to Obsidian so you can use Claude skills for fixing broken links, improving clarity, fixing typos, fixing mistakes in concepts, etc. Ask Claude to migrate existing WP site to Obsidian.
• Read useful articles / watch useful videos
  • Deep Dive into LLMs like ChatGPT
  • https://github.com/hesreallyhim/awesome-claude-code#from-anthropic
  • A field guide to Claude Fable 5: Finding your unknowns
  • Effective context engineering for AI agents
• Learn to use Claude to review your PRs on GitHub automatically.
  • Ask Claude how best to do this.

Misc notes

• As coding agents become better at writing code than humans, it’s more important than ever to become a domain expert because that’s an area where it might take a while for agents to catch up.