shit claude told me
// a developer's journal of learning AI-assisted development, one broken project at a time

I'm an engineering and product leader. I manage teams of developers who build real software for real companies. In late 2025, I realized that if I was going to tell my teams to adopt AI-assisted development tools, I needed to actually understand them myself - not from a demo, not from a blog post, not from a vendor pitch. From the terminal.

So I started using Claude Code. Every day. On everything. 40+ projects over 3 months. Each one got 80% awesome, then vibe coded into the weeds, then I moved on - because the point was never the product. The point was what I learned building it.

the agentic ladder

5 Orchestrating Loops Multiple agents, multiple projects. Five words gets you a feature.
4 Managing the Loop The setup IS the work. CLAUDE.md files, conventions, config.
3 On the Loop Delegate phases, review results. "Build the auth system."
2 In the Loop Writing code together. Review every output, fix every mistake.
1 Prompting Claude is a search engine you type full sentences into.

the posts

Nov 2025 "Can we use CDK?"

Treating Claude Code like a chatbot. Polite questions. Repeating commands. CLAUDE.md files that said "to be added."

Dec 2025 "Build me a full-stack app"

First real projects. Ambitious scope. Learning that Cognito will ruin your week.

Jan 2026 "You are the fullstack architect"

Delegating entire phases. Multi-service AWS architectures. The shift from writing code to directing code.

Jan 2026 "Make it utterly insane"

Comfortable enough to have fun. Art direction instead of technical requirements. Pranks as proof of fluency.

Late Jan 2026 "DO NOT MAKE CODE CHANGES"

Process maturity. Investigation before implementation. CLAUDE.md files grew to 125+ lines.

Feb 2026 "Do the corolla next"

Compression. One-word prompts. Multiple projects simultaneously. Teaching others what I'd learned.

Feb 2026 "This entire session"

Full circle. Domain, infrastructure, content, and publishing - all in one CLI session.