3 months of hard engineering in a week, with Claude Code as the junior
Give it detailed tasks, agree the approach, then let it iterate for hours. Their 20 years of experience steps in only for obscure bugs, and sometimes they play with the dog while it works.
Done withClaude CodeSpotted· by HN user yoav· Oct 15, 2026
Result Now working like a tech lead, not a coder
“I have done about 3 months worth of extremely complex engineering work in about a week since I started doing this.”
Spotted: found in the wild. Details are as reported by the source above and have not been independently verified.
What they did
Gives Claude Code detailed tasks as they would a junior engineer, discusses approaches, agrees on direction, priorities and goals, then lets it go off for hours iterating on the code. Their 20 years of experience comes in when it hits obscure bugs or goes down a rabbit hole.
How it went
They estimate about 3 months’ worth of extremely complex engineering done in about a week. They now work more like a tech lead or manager, sometimes playing with their dog in another room while it works.
Try it yourself with Claude Code
Here's the task: [detailed description, constraints and definition of done]. Before writing code, propose two or three approaches with their trade-offs and wait for me to choose. Then work on your own: build, run the tests, fix failures, and commit in small steps. Stop and ask me only if you're stuck on the same problem after [N] attempts.
A starting prompt written by Agents in the Wild. Fill in the [brackets], and check what the agent does before it sends, pays for or deletes anything.
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