How I Plan, Build, and Run Loops with Claude Code in 40 Minutes | Thariq Shihipar

As the models have gotten smarter, they need less direction, fewer constraints, and fewer examples. We've got /loop, we've got SL goal, and we've got workflows. These are all geared at trying to get the agent to run for long periods of time. This was just one shot, like when one prompt. So, it's created the caption, and it's created the little overlay, and now it's going to fade to black. My goal for this year is to be more productive, but work less. Hey, everyone. Today I'm really excited to welcome Tharic from the cloud code team. This has been a long time coming. So I'm going to ask Taric to show us how to design loops and workflows to get cloud to work longer and how he personally uses cloud code and also the new cloud tag. Welcome sir. — Hey Peter. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I've been excited to join for a while. — Yeah. All right. So may maybe before you demo anything, maybe you can talk about at a high level how you and a clock team think about how do you go from you being a person prompting the agents to kind of design loops and some of the stuff to get the agent to kind of work by itself. Like how do you guys think about this? — Totally. Yeah. So I think loops are a pretty general term I think for just different ways of like having the agent get feedback or like sort of uh yeah work for long periods of time in an orchestrated way. And so we've got slashloop, we've got slashgoal, and we've got workflows. And these are all, yeah, like you said, geared at trying to get the agent to run for long periods of time. Slashgoal is one of those things that it helps the agent remind itself what its exit condition is, right? And only allows it to exit once you know it. And so goal is really great for when you uh have a complicated task and you really need to, you know, make sure that this is like done at the end. you really want to prevent any stopping. You kind of also want to give the agent feedback, a signal to basically say like, hey, power through things, right? And so I think one of the like if you were to step into Claude's shoes, sometimes you ask someone asked you to do a task, you run into a like maybe, you know, sort of a complication or something that is maybe not quite up to spec or like doesn't match what the user said, you might stop early and be like, hey, should I keep doing this or not? Right? And so uh goal is one way of just kind of the user indicating like hey I've done enough spec and expiration right I understand the problem space uh just go execute on it and if you run into something you know fill it in right so that's how we think about goal and then workflows are in my opinion maybe like the most powerful form of this where you can you know spin up sub agents to both do the work paralyze the work and verify the work and so uh I think especially for non non-technical work. This can be like a really great way of taking a non-deterministic task and then breaking it down roughly into a deterministic task. So yeah, I think that's how we think about some of these. And uh you know, I know I'm going to do a quick demo, but like before that, like just on the clock team, — how do you guys use some of this stuff? Like do you do like a go make this match design or like go make this number go up or what do you use? Yeah. — Yeah. I mean, everyone does different things, right? based on like kind of the like um based on yeah what they're trying to do. I think like uh you know Jared's talked a lot about the bond rewrite in Rust and how that use workflows and he's going to be talking more about that. Um I think like anytime you have a deterministic sort of like signal like for example like latency, right? like um goal is like a great thing to just sort of like have the agent explore things sort of in like an auto research way, right? Um and uh yeah, I think that like you like let's say you're talking about design, right? I think one way you want to think about this is like how well can the agent like understand what your like design is to begin with, right? And so um you might want to like turn it into like if it has a spec that it can verify like if it's a Figma file, you use the Figma MCP and then you're like slashgoal make sure that the rendered design matches the Figma MCP. That's a lot easier than like a screenshot, right? And so if you're a screenshot, maybe you want to do a workflow uh where you like it's more squishy, you know, like there's like a rubric that you're evaluating against and you have a verification agent and things like that. So — Got it. — Yeah. Very dependent on the task. — So basically the planning matters a lot, right? To give a because I tried to give it a go to like just build me an amazing game and and then it kind of went off the rails because like you know just like one line. So — yeah, I mean I think um the details of like you know there's a lot to figure out in what you want, you know, there's a lot of work that goes into that. Yeah.

— Got it. Okay. So let's make this really concrete. Uh you've been sharing uh really awesome videos on Twitter about like uh using cloud to make the video and I think you have like a video workflow that you want to share with us, right? — Yeah, exactly. So I yeah, I've had a few people uh ask about this and I think this is a good sort of demo both for like video editing but also just like how to think about like a nontechnical work. So 10 minutes before I got on this call, I recorded a quick video and so this is me just like you know making a video. Basically what I'm saying is like hey it's me um you know like I'm on the Peter Yang podcast. I'm going to point to where I want an overlay to show up and then I'm basically saying like, "Hey, uh, fade to black," you know? So, this is like a quick video that I put together, right? And, um, now like the prompt I gave it is this, right? Like, uh, this is a repo for Peter Yang podcast. Uh, there's a sample video here called Peter Yang recording. Transcribe it using whisper. Then use reotion to create a UI that shows the transcript with each individual word being highlighted and different overlays. And yeah, goal don't stop until the video is fully rendered. Right. — And so now I like uh this was just one shot like when one prompt, right? And what it gave me is this. So it's transcribed it. It obviously doesn't know my name is Tharic, right? And uh it's like overlaid the um the text uh or sorry it's created the caption and it's created the little overlay and now it's going to fade to black. Right. And so — Oh, awesome. Okay. So you basically said out the instructions out loud, — right? — I said it out loud. Yeah. Exactly. And of course there are many ways that you can do this but it's like now in this directory you know uh transcribed everything right. Yeah. Uh using whisper uh it's created the reotion stuff. Yeah. This is like the very basic start to uh video editing workflow that I have which is uh yeah I think a good signal for like how to do non-technical work in uh in cloud code. — So you kind of did this manually with the prompts stuff but then you probably saved it into a skill or something right? Yeah. — So right now I don't have a skill. I think one of the things I try and do first is really figure out what I want before I turn it into a skill you know and so what are the like uh edge cases here? Um, one of the things I noticed that I had to prompt it towards is getting better at figuring out where my um where my hand was, right? And so like or where I was pointing towards. And even now I'm not thrilled with like where this showed up, you know? And so [snorts] like yeah, like you could imagine that one direction I could take this in is I could be like, oh, I want to track my fingers or track my face and then get give the agent more metadata, right? so that it can then do interesting overlays. — This episode is brought to you by Whisper Flow. Whisper Flow saves me at least 3 hours a week and is one of my favorite AI apps by far. It's just so much faster to dictate to AI using your voice than to type. You just talk naturally and it outputs clean, ready to send text. Whisper Flow even removes filler words and formats your sentences for you. I use Whisper Flow for everything, including drafting newsletter posts, writing product specs, replying on Slack, and more. It works on Mac, Windows, iPhone, and Android across all of your favorite apps. Try a free at whisperflow. com and use my code peterwisperflow to get 6 months free.

That's Peter Whisperflow. Now, back to our episode. I think you had another tab that had like a plan or something. Is that for the video skill? — Yeah. So, I think I want to talk uh I'd love to talk a little bit about how I got here. You know what I mean? So like I think like even to do this prompt I think it took a bunch of uh planning and learning to get here right and then I think that like um one of the things that I I think when we talk about plans we often are talking about things where it's like um just one shot right like you plan and then you do something and that that's it. But I think planning is more of this iterative process of like exploring, investigating, finding out what you don't know, what you want, right? And then like together like in the end that sort of simplifies itself. But so like here's an example. But while we do this, I would love to do something where it's like, okay, um I'm going to give it okay to say like I want to update the UI of these overlays, right? Um and I want to use Peter Yang's style. Um here's his blog. uh create a HTML artifact for exploring different designs for the overlays and captions uh design variations. Okay, so this is like an example to me. This is also planning, right? Because like what I'm doing is sort of like I um I'm trying to figure out what I want here, right? And so it's more of like a exploration. You can see one of the important things I'm doing is like I'm giving it a reference, right? So when I give it, you know, your website, it can now fi fetch the HTML and start doing this. So like this is sort of like a plan that will run while I sort of go over the other, you know, kind of things I do when I'm planning, right? So one of them is like okay, what how does transcription work, right? And this is actually I think pretty important to know because like it informs a lot of the edge cases. So uh this transcription uses whisper and so um uh you know like cloud code sort of put this explainer together which is honestly like kind of amazing. Um the important thing for me is like the uh like ways things can go wrong, right? And this is something I prompted it in the plan was like I want to explain whisper to me and understand what the edge cases are, right? And so one of the things that says like silence can become thanks for watching, right? Um or yeah, a word can be split into two chunks. It doesn't know it doesn't have speaker recognition, right? And so there are a bunch of different like edge cases here where um I think all of this is quite like good and this sort of like helped me build a confidence in using whisper, right? Yeah. — Um but having these edge cases and knowing sort of what the limits are upfront really helped me like avoid this case where I build this complicated workflow during whisper and then you know I realized there are things going wrong um and I like sort of didn't have these unknown unknowns, right? And so this case is sort of like me sort of doing planning, but really it's like me discovering my unknowns. And um I think that can take a lot of different shapes. It can be learning, it can be technical specs, right? It can be mock-ups and exploration. Um yeah, I I'm starting to like I feel like the word planned is maybe uh too broad right now. So — is it's more like exploration and understanding like what you're trying to do basically. — Yeah. I like to say uh like getting rid of your unknowns, you know, like I think whenever you have a task, — it kind of like almost always uh there's a lot that you don't know either you don't know how things work or what you want and it's very iterative, you know, and so it's not just like a you write it all down once and then you implement it. I think there's like many steps and uh different passes. So — and yeah, and dude, this is like a beautiful plan, man. Like, dude, do you have like is this like the claw template or something? Like it has images. — This is using the front-end design plugin. I think you know like I think like uh yeah, it's not uh yeah, there are uglier plans here. Like I've gotten this like reotion plan. Um — I think that like you know the design of it doesn't matter so much as sort of like you really just want to make sure it's something that you really do read, you know, and kind of get a sense of like not all of it, but like there's important parts in it. And I think one failure mode I see is that people still sort of like glaze over, you know, the plans and explainers. So, um, yeah. — Yeah, it becomes really because like AI can write all these, you know, crazy markdown files and they're usually pretty long and then at some point like I just get lazy. I'm like, okay, you know, just just do it. Just do it. — Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I think that's like the thing that, you know, it happens to all of us, right? Like a like the prompt box can definitely just be a lazy button, right? Where you're just like, hey, just do the thing. Um, but usually, you know, like uh you end up paying for that, right? Because if you're trying to do something serious uh and you know, like you're taking the lazy step at each way, it it'll end up taking longer, maybe costing longer, too. So, um, — so it's kind of this iterative. So, so you ask about like the whisper and then you kind of like learn a little bit more and then you ask to make another plan and then at some point you have like a plan that you can share, right? — Yeah. — Exactly. Yeah. So I I did a lot of for this video recognition stuff. like you know research into how different video like algorithms worked, right? Like I think I did one on like video segmentation. Um I wanted to put like text behind a subject and so this was like something I like explored and learned more about — and um I ended up finding that like there wasn't something reliable enough here for me to use. But um yeah, I think there's like just a lot of this like iterative process of like finding out what do I want, you know, and what is possible right before I can do it. And so um it looks like this overlay is maybe almost done. So we'll we'll see it soon. Yeah.

— And how about like on the team? So have you got the rest of the team to review HTML? Is that a markdown or — Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean I think like everyone is different, right? So I think that like but I think HTML artifacts I mean we launched artifacts, right? Um, currently it's only on teams and enterprise, but um, hopefully coming to Maxin Pro. Um, and uh, yeah, that that's like how we share things now at the company. It's like we ask Claude to make an artifact and this can be, you know, of a plan of a PR that we've already done. Uh, it can be, you know, like a status report, like an incident report, things like that. So, um, — yeah, it's, uh, definitely how we do it. Yeah. — All right, let's see what it generated here. — Yeah, let's do it. So let's say open overlay style HTML. Okay. So yeah, here are some of the like uh you know the options it's made. I think it's probably maybe like indexed more on the stack over or the uh Substack brand versus your brand. You know what I mean? — Yeah. Because I don't have a brand. Yeah. — Yeah. Yeah. No, I think you do, right? I think you do. Like I think you've got the red and white. We can probably iterate on it there. Um but this is one of the things where I'm like you know there's quite a lot of difference between these different uh like you know designs right and um yeah one of the ways I like to plan is to like do this exploration especially because I'm not a designer um so like I just really just only know it when I see it you know. — Got it. Um like just to wrap up the plan conversation like — yeah you know I've been writing like product specs for like 10 years and like you know they usually have like what's the problem we're solving what's the solution what's the goal so on and so forth right but I feel like part of this stuff is like read by agents now — and I I feel like the different sections of your spec needs to change or maybe like the product spec and technical spec is like one thing like how do you guys do it on the team like you have like one section for the humans to read and agents to read or how do you think about it? — Yeah, good question. I think that it is very tied together, right? Like I think a spec kind of can evolve even towards like planning like I think one of the things I think I'm showing here, let me see um implementation. Yeah, I think like one of the things that you sort of see here uh sometimes is that when you run something the uh the model can find things that it didn't anticipate or you didn't anticipate when you're implementing, right? So I see — um this is like I don't think of specking just happening at the start, right? It's like you start with like the human request and then the agent does some like technical exploration. It comes back, maybe you do some mockups, some explainers trying to understand your unknowns. You refine that. Uh you give it to the agent again. It might start implementing it. uh I ask it to keep implementation notes as it goes so that it like finds out you know like what are the you know what are things that we we're not expecting about this implementation and once we have that we can actually you know respspec if we need to right like it depending on how things go. So yeah I think it's much less like there's like one handoff of spec to implementation and more this like back and forth process. Yeah. — Yeah. cuz I guess it's pretty cheap to build now. So you can just like maybe ask it to build the simplest version of this and like there's probably a lot of bugs and issues and you can keep iterating, right? — Yeah, exactly. Or like the prototype version of this, right? Like that's what how I think about these overlays. These are like prototypes of the, you know, of the design, right? And — okay, — um if we like uh — like it then we can do the more expensive version, which is instead of HTML, we can do it in React. that means you have to like you know sort of rerender the video and do all the code changes. Um so like what's the like smallest step you can take to prove out the concept that you want to like you prove out the spec more. Yeah. — And like I Yeah. I love how it takes implementation. So the next time you start a new section, it can just refer to the HTML, right? It's like a living document.

document. — Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Got it. What percent of your work now is done through clot tech on Slack versus in like the terminal or like you know the cloud app? — Yeah, I think that like the way for me it's trending is that like there's a lot of parallel stuff happening in cloud tag and so any multiclouding is often happening in cloud tag unless there's a reason why it needs to happen locally, you know. Um I think one of the things we sp put a lot of time into is like making sure that our environment can run um in remote and so um yeah I multi-clotting is happening in cloud tag you know initial explorations PR specs like trying to understand something is happening in cloud tag and then once I get into there's usually one thing I'm focusing on and that's happening in cloud code and it's like more you know like back and forth iterative right um and So yeah, I think that's how I'm using it, but I think everyone at the company has sort of like different like approaches and mixes to it. — And when you say like what do you mean by multicloud? Oh yeah, like just like if I have like multiple tasks happening at once, I especially if I'm like trying to involve someone else, like if I am um you know, I've got a PR that I'm trying to get merged, you know, like what one thing I'll do is like I'll you know, ask it to babysit uh the PR fix test and then tag a reviewer and my like reviewer will get tagged in the same slack channel and we'll like be able to talk there. Um but just generally multiling is like anything any background work where before I was having you know like five different clouds uh in my cloud code now like it's mostly one active cloud code session and then a bunch of cloud tag sessions. [snorts] — Oh interesting. Okay. And um so you talk to cloud tag both through like DMs on Slack and also like in share team channels I'm guessing or — um — primary. Yeah. — Yeah. In Slack. Yeah. and both in my private like I have a yeah my thoric claude slack channel where I do like most of my work and then uh yeah we have like team channels like feedback and things like that where we um or like project specific engineering channels as well um that's like a common pattern we see yeah I guess that makes sense because I do think like uh these coding apps right now are like primary single player experiences like you're kind of talking to the agents through different threads — and if you think about it like the cloud app actually kind of looks similar to Slack's like a bunch of threads Like just like Slack has a bunch of channels. So I guess like the idea is like Slack is now the multiplayer cloud experience, right? Because like everyone's there already. — Yeah. I mean I think like this is you know where it's starting, right? Like I think ultimately we think cloud will be you know this like sort of proactive agent that's sort of like meeting you where you are you know and I think Slack is where anthropic is right. Um and uh yeah it's a very natural way to explore and yeah it's surprisingly good at coding. can like uh you know there are some people who just do all of their coding almost completely in cloud tag. Yeah. — But okay maybe this is a dumb question but how do you like uh like you know in cloud code like easily trigger scales and stuff but like if I'm in cloud tag like do I just tag cloud and slash the scale or how is it? — Um yeah you can just tell it to use the scale. — Okay. — Yeah. Yeah. There is still I think there's still UX iteration we're working on around all of this stuff. Yeah. — Okay. I guess do you think uh do you agree like I feel like the future for this like because you gave me a talk right on human agent interaction — and like um I feel like the future is just like the agent is just like another employee like you got to onboard an employee you can talk to it through Slack you can like give it a phone call you know we'll have to think — yeah um I think it's a good question I think that um I think these metaphors can sometimes be helpful but also limiting in some ways I think that like One of the things you know when we talk about identity is that like in cloud tag every agent every channel has its own memory right and so um that is like I think one choice right like you could also imagine that there are like uh you know multiple clouds you tag like each one has a different slack identity and you're tagging them and things like that and um I'm not like I think it is kind of helpful to think of an agent that is like sort of has persistence and uh you know uh memory but um I think they're also different from co-workers in in some ways right but I think they're like they're proactive and like you know yeah it's proactive it has memory it has identity um but yeah it's like uh just sort of like an evolution of cloud code and I think we want to see where like you know uh where the models will uh will take us there versus sort of like putting it into a box you know — yeah that's a good point yeah Like it definitely has a lot better memory than any human. — Better and worse sometimes. You know what I mean? Like it's spiky, right? So yeah. — Yeah, makes sense. Okay. All right, dude. Why don't I do something fun? I want to show you my clock setup. I think we talked about this in person. I feel pretty proud of this. I built this podcast production skill — and uh what it does is like it takes a transcript of an interview that I did. I actually interviewed your colleague Jess and uh it kind of generates a bunch of stuff for me. So it generates thumbnails and like stuff to cut. So basically I just tag it and I paste a transcript and then it starts generating like you know clickbaity YouTube thumbnails and stuff. — Yeah. So it generates stuff and like I basically give it like my examples to try to keep it on track. — Yeah. — But I guess that this skill is kind of like trying to do a lot of things. So maybe like I'm curious if you have any feedback or you know. — Yeah. This is cool. Can I see what it produces like the clips or like you know — Oh what it produces? Yeah. So some of it what produces is just like pure text. It's like here's a news post here some takeway — copy into YouTube. Yeah. — Yeah. And then I have this other skill called the video post skills. It's kind of similar to yours, but I'm sure it's not as sophisticated, but like it basically takes the YouTube video for this thing. — Cool. — And then it uh extracts it and then it gives me some ideas for clips to make. — Yeah. — Does it do the clips as well? — Yes, it actually does. So I said do two and then it uses uh I don't actually know what it uses. It uses a bunch of random stuff to — probably fmp and stuff, right? Yeah. — Yeah. Probably fm and then it makes a video. Yeah. And it adds captions. — Yeah. That's awesome. — So yeah, it's not perfect though, but yeah. Mhm. — Yeah. I mean, um this is great. How like uh how well do you feel like it matches what you want, you know, like or do you know like what it would look like to be better? Um, I wish it could like add some like, you know, B-rolls and the stuff that you showed me like overlays — and stuff like that — and like I I wish it was smart enough to know how to pull in like for the video clip like um, you know, if the cloud logo or something you can just find it online. — Yeah. — So, should I just tell cloud code to do all this stuff or — I think you can. Yeah. I mean, I think that like are you working in one persistent repo or like um I think one of the things I think about is like sometimes you want a skill repo with a lot of scripts and things that you are like you know like it's more of like a workspace that you're working in, right? And like I think of a skill Yeah. Like I think sometimes a skill can be instructions on how to create that workspace, right? And so — um that that's maybe something to think about because like the more you know scripts and sort of like things that you build up the more the agent can the less it has to do from scratch you know um but uh yeah — I mean I folder each time — no I have all my skills at the user level — uh and there's like this personal whatever personal OS folder that has like all the output and stuff. — I see. Okay cool. Yeah. — But you're saying like — Yeah. I mean, I think you can sort of build like a video editing harness here. I I'm uh curious about the thumbnails. Do you ever use like an image gen API like a Gemini or even an OpenAI or something like that? Yeah, — I found it really bad at uh changing my face. So, like for example, if I have a smiling thing and that has to make it like a shocked face, — it makes me look super ugly. Dude, — that's funny. — But um — Yeah. But I think it's pretty good at like I don't if I give up my face and I tell you to change the background of the text, it's pretty good. — Yes. — Yeah. I mean I think Claude is quite good at like one of the things that Cloud is good at is using other tools. So like you could give it like the Gemini or OpenAI image gen APIs — and then you can ask it to look at your faces that it generates as well, you know, and sort of like tweak it there. So it can do this like interactively and pro progressively as well which is which can be helpful you know. — Oh okay interesting. — Yeah. — So basically so basically what I do is I basically just chain a bunch of skills to together like you know — cool — prepare this thing and then use a thumbnail and so on and so forth. — I feel like I know how to use skills now but like some of the other stuff you talked about online like dynamic workflows and stuff — like I have no clue. Right. I have no

— like I have no clue. Right. — Yeah. How would we use a workflow for something like this? Right. I think like one thing you can imagine is like when you're using — I think your thumbnails example was a good one where or sorry your shorts uh where maybe you want to generate 10 different shorts um or five different shorts or something. Workflows are a great example for that, right? So you can like say, hey, like um the main agent decides which five areas of the clip, you know, you want to like create a short for, right? And then the like workflow spins off a sub agent for each one. You also give it maybe a rubric for like what does a good clip look like, right? Like uh and then each one is verifying against it. Um, and then you're getting back at the end this like um, like you know, each clip has a maximum amount of compute put into it to make sure that it's matching what you want versus like if you're doing two or three simultaneously sometimes like I think like um like Claude might like verify or put less work into any individual clip. So um, — I see. — And to create a workflow, do I just like uh just tell to make a workflow basically? Yeah. or just be like, "Hey, like yeah, you know, create 10 clips here. Use a workflow. Uh this is my like rubric to verify uh like what a good clip looks like, right? And this can also be a skill. So you can package a skill with the workflow. Um and then like you can the workflow is just a JS file and you can like ask it to like you save the JS file into the skill and now you have this like reusable skill that you can use. And this is like a dumb question, but like the main advantage over doing this workflow thing versus just using a scale is like uh it can sp sub agents and like keep the context clean or um yeah. So I think it's like yeah, one of it is context. I think the other one is sort of like um laziness and verification, right? So like uh if you have a you know like a short is one example of something where um you don't have a deterministic like hey is this a good short or not right and so if you have a rubric and you have a uh like uh you know verification agent that reads the rubric and then it looks like oh like hey let me review the short to make sure it's good and give feedback right uh that's something that the workflow enables as well and we found that like you know we call it self-referential bias like when a model prefers its own outputs it's going to be like more lenient at like um uh it's going to be more lenient at like you know verifying it. Okay. So basically you want to have a separate cloud doing the work versus verifying the work, right? — Yeah. And in this case like a separate cloud coordinating the work uh so that your main agent is coordinating it each one doing the work and then verifying. Yeah. — Okay. And this way like the three separate clouds have like different context models and it's not just like less bias. — Yeah. Exactly. And they will both all use more compute I think like they'll put more like you know less likely for it to like stop early. Yeah. Think more. Yeah. Okay, got it. Um, awesome, dude. Well, let me ask you some like high level questions, dude. Since u it looks like you do you mostly use cloud in your in the terminal or do you actually use the app? — I'm a mix of terminal and desktop. Yeah, depending obviously we do a lot of like what we call ant fooding. So, it's sort of like um you know, whatever I feel like I need to test the most. Yeah.

— Got it. Do you have any tips for like I I feel like sometimes I get exhausted, man. Like there's like five threads going on. at once for five different things and then like I'm just like they're constantly paying me. It's actually worse than having backto-back meetings in some way. — Any tips for how to keep your own cult window clean — or you know? — Yeah, I mean this is a good question you know I think that this is like my goal for this year is to be more productive but work less you know and so um I think this is like I think something we should all sort of be able to push ourselves on. Um I think that like uh you know like I think one thing we try and do is sort of like I try to have like one project I'm focusing on you know and so even if there are other things that I'm just need to get unblocked like I need to have this build and merge and you know things like and explore something like I think one project that I'm really focusing on is very um helpful just uh because I find that the thing that cost me the most time is when I'm like yeah maybe a little bit lazy and now I've like on a bunch of I'm like sort of multitasking these things. I do a lazy prompt and then I'm like, "Oh, like I've wasted this time now," you know, and so um yeah, I think that there's like just because like I think there's a optimal amount of multi multiclotting depending on, you know, who you are, what you're doing. Um but for me at least, it's something where like I tend to have like one task where I'm really focusing on the most. Yeah. — Okay. So maybe like the AA agents take care of the rest or something, but like why not? — Yeah. or even prioritization for yourself, you know what I mean? I think can be like a good like angle, you know? Yeah, — makes sense. And and like um do you have concerns? Like I worry that um like you know when because the agents like work pretty hard and keep going and like and like — Yeah. — Maybe this is my problem like I don't actually like I said, I don't actually read everything that it produces carefully. Oh, so then I worry that like the whole repo will just turn to slop at some point like if I don't — like do you have any like uh routines or jobs that clean this stuff up periodically or — Yeah. So I mean um obviously we have things like simplify which Boris put out that like you know sort of simplifies the repo. I think it depends on what you're using it for as well, you know, like I think someone like uh when you're using it for the outputs, like like the video outputs. um those are pretty uh like you know maybe the quality of the code matters less you know and the agents are very like you know persistent and they'll figure it out but um I find organization is often more for me than the agent to sort of like you know make me feel better about the workspace um if I'm only caring about the outputs but yeah you can always just ask it to simplify or organize um yeah — okay got it and you try to keep this con do you try to like minimize uh and try to keep the concept window clean like you try not to like have a bunch of you know MCPs on or like you know cloud

MD has a super long like do you try to optimize that or — yeah I mean I think that like yeah I yes I think that one of the things we've noticed especially as the models have gotten smarter um is that like uh you know we'll be talking more about this we cut down the cloud code system prompt by 80% um and the reason is that as the models have gotten smarter, they need less direction. They need fewer constraints and they need um fewer examples, you know, and so a lot of our system prompt would be like, okay, like here's the batch tool. Here are like five examples of using the batch tool. Never do it in these cases, right? And um the models are now kind of aligned enough that they know like hey uh we don't need to um like uh we like we don't the examples are almost constraining it you know because now it's like uh oh like you want things like this example and so if you remove the examples it actually can be more free format and like the constraints can also constrain it too because like uh you oftentimes when you say never you really mean never. You just mean like most of the time don't do this. And if you give it the reason you don't want to do it instead, that can be more effective than the like don't do this constraint. So, um I think that like all this to say is that like you want to trim your context. I feel like cloud. MBS are probably too long right now and you probably want to shorten them more and more, right? Uh probably a lot of skills are too long. Um I think MCPs, you know, depends on the MCP. I think like obviously some of them can take up a lot of context but I think a lot of the MCP team has put a lot of work into this to you know make it better with tool search and things like that. So but yeah definitely cloudds like any sort of instructions the models just need like more room to run oftent times. Yeah. Then do you like instead of saying like uh you know like for example let's say writing a Twitter post like instead of saying like hey make sure it's like — 280 characters or less and do not do this like do you give it like more like principles to follow like you know like how do you prompt it then like is it more like — yeah I think a Twitter post is a good example where you might give your give it context on yourself. So you're like hey I am you know I work on cloud code I'm anthropic uh this is sort of like some of yeah some of the principles we follow. Obviously 280 characters is still like a good like um sort of constraint because that's like it does need to happen, right? But you can even just say it's a tweet and it will like sort of know um like or this is a good example where you might say like hey keep it under 280 characters. Uh but let's say that maybe there's a version of it that's better as a tweet thread with two tweets. You know what I mean? And so like in giving it the sense of like hey I want to write a tweet thread. I'd prefer it to be one tweet, you know? um gives us more freedom and flexibility. Yeah. To find something

good. — Okay. Got it. Okay. Um and then let me ask this. Um so Boris has been saying like uh coding is like a solved problem, right? And like — Yeah. — Um and I feel like there's like becoming more technical these days is like a little bit like I guess my question is for someone like me who wants to actually, you know, learn how to work with agents more to actually learn what they're doing. Like how do you actually become more technical? like it's not about the syntax or anything, right? Is that is it just like using it more or like how do you — Yeah, I mean I think for the first step is motivating yourself to learn things, you know what I mean? I think that is like um honestly really hard and like I find myself doing this as well where like uh you know if you don't need to learn something to get the job done maybe you won't right but I think that like um it is really important. I think the goal of learning to be more technical is to know my unknown unknowns, right? And so there are some things that like being technical and knowing the syntax of Typescript is not really very helpful, you know? But I think like being technical and knowing like okay like hey uh what are the like trade-offs of different backend services and uh what are the different video encryption libraries and how do they work and what's the difference between a local or remote video encryption or transcription library right these are all like I think pretty helpful right and so I think oftentimes I'm trying to learn the constraints of the system right and so like what is possible how is it doing it right now how good could it be you know like what if we did something else. And um Claude can often brainstorm and teach you this if you like push it, right? But you really do have to push it. I think like um this is like, you know, just the hardest thing about education and what everyone says is sort of like it feels good to like try and learn something, but like actually learning something is more work, you know, and like it should feel like work. I think Kaparthi says this a lot, right? Like education should feel like work more than fun. So yeah. — Yeah, that's actually good. cuz um cuz actually easier to just like for example with the videos thing, right? Like it's actually easier to just keep prompting cloud to just do it and then look at the output and then like not actually learn anything, dude. Like just like go figure out and then it figs out. But the fact that you actually generate these like pretty detailed HTML reports and read them, I think it's probably the exception, dude. I think most people don't do this. Yeah. I mean, I think it's something I'm trying to push. Yeah. But like I think that like this is how you can learn to make just like I think the question for you is like okay like how do you go from making good shorts to making like really like the best shorts like highest production quality shorts out there. You know what I mean? And I think if that's the goal, right? Like I think you need to like then sort of probably learn more about like both about video production and editing and uh and like the technical concepts, right? And then push yourself that way. And I think that like I think we all want to push ourselves towards like being better and faster and not just faster. Yeah. So, — okay. So, maybe I'll add uh some custom instructions to my cloud. — Be like, hey, make sure you generate HTML reports for everything so I can read that. — Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, yeah, I think it's uh something you want to push yourself to as well, you know, to like figure out when are when do you want to understand how something is working. — Got it. Awesome, man. Thank you for giving the gift of cloud code to all of us and um yeah really excited for what what's next dude. I don't know if you probably can't share anything but you know really excited for what's next. A lot of what's next is cloud tag you know and it'll keep getting better but I think it's just something that it's hard for us to understate like how much it's sort of changed work at anthropic here and so excited for everyone else to get on board or to try it out. Yeah, — if you have a really capable employee you're not going to like micromanage them, right? You just put, hey, tag them on Slack and I can't do this. Then hopefully it's done. — Or you want to like talk with iteratively with other people and collaborate. Yeah, — you should build it to a point where I can walk by Claus's desk and just like ask some questions respond. — Yeah, like a robot. Yeah, I mean that could be a hack project for you. You know, I feel like I could already do that. Yeah. — Cool. All right, well um really great chatting and um Yeah, I I think people know where to find you online, so I don't think we have to talk about that. — Yeah, sounds good. Yeah. Amazing. Thanks, Peter. Appreciate