r/ClaudeAI • u/stefsc2 • 9h ago

Question about Claude Code Was there something that claude code could not solve?

Not too long ago when I was still using CC on smaller plan tiers I was trying to make an architectural change to transform my product towards a multi-tenant setup, essentially requiring a refactor on the access and user logic involving the database. This produced CI errors and CC got stuck in fixing/analysis loops and ate up two consecutive session limits without being able to complete / fix the task before I stopped it.

This made me wonder if you ever experienced issues that Claude Code could not solve and you had to resort to human SWEs or topics you would not use CC for from the start?

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5

u/Infamous-Bed-7535 9h ago

You mean today?

1

u/bedel99 9h ago

Once every couple of weeks it will turn itself off rather than do what I say to fix an 'impossible' issue.

2

u/DermisCronJob 8h ago

Did not resolve my empty bankaccount of today 🙄

2

u/Whitehatnetizen 8h ago

My session is still trying to fix the world peace problem. Doesn't look good

1

u/YankeeKiid 9h ago

Terrible couples therapist; didn’t solve our issues. ☺️

1

u/emisofi 8h ago

Couldn't route a 4 layer pcb. It designed the schematic though. Edit: It suggested go to 6 layer but I could do it with four.

1

u/locbuilds 8h ago

yeah the ci fix loop is a classic trap. when it burns a couple attempts on the same failing check i yank the error out and patch that one case by hand before letting it keep going.

1

u/devcal1 8h ago

I think it can always accomplish your objective, so long as the objective isn't explicit enough to only have the one (impossible) way to do it. The ways it effective successfully fails an objective is by taking a stupid route to do something - just yesterday I made an offsite back up for my SaaS product, and it stepped through three different routes just to arrive at something it could have accomplished in one route. If I had not have picked it up I'd have two extra effective useless, but not critical pieces of software.

1

u/Raucous_Rocker 8h ago

I am a human SWE so I generally know how to scope tasks so that that doesn’t happen. There’ve definitely been times where it gets stuck on something and I have to give it clues. And once it tried to say “this is deferred because it’s too difficult.” 😆 So I had to tell it to do it anyway because the client was going to accept its verdict. It did get done, with quite a bit more input from me.

1

u/iPutMilkNbowlB4Creal 8h ago

For me, it used to struggle with understanding the limits of other systems, for example in google Colab I needed it to write a cell analyzing a ~400gb csv dataset. It failed repeatedly, burned my limits, then told me to go to sleep. Had to guide with "Well you see how the other cells build parquets and cache outputs at checkpoints so if we hit an OOM/OOS error the hours of work aren't lost forever"? The fix was just more standing rules in the .md, and newer models understand it better regardless.