Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms

https://twitter.com/NicerInPerson/status/2014989679796347375

34•AffableSpatula•1h ago

Comments

tom2948329494•1h ago

And… how?

AffableSpatula•53m ago

The feature is shipped in the latest builds of claude code, but it's turned off by a feature flag check that phones home to the backend to see if the user's account is meant to have it on. You can just patch out the function in the minified cli.js that does this backend check and you gain access to the feature.

bonsai_spool•37m ago

Do you know what patch to apply? The Github link from the OP seems to have a lot of other things included.

AffableSpatula•32m ago

it's my repo - it's a fork of cc-mirror which is an established project for parallel claude installs. I wanted to take the least disruptive approach for the sake of using working code and not spelunking through bugs. Having said that - if you look through the latest commits you'll see how the patch works, it's pretty straightforward - you could do it by hand if you wanted.

codethief•1h ago

https://xcancel.com/NicerInPerson/status/2014989679796347375

In his second post he included a link to GitHub: https://github.com/mikekelly/claude-sneakpeek

engates•1h ago

Isn't this pretty much what Ruv has been building for like two years?

https://github.com/ruvnet/claude-flow

AffableSpatula•58m ago

The difference is that this is tightly integrated into the harness. There's a "delegation mode" (akin to plan mode) that appears to clear out the context for the team lead. The harness appears to be adding system-reminder breadcrumbs into the top of the context to keep the main team lead from drifting, which is much harder to achieve without modifying the harness.

estearum•49m ago

It's insane to me that people choose to build anything in the perimeter of Claude Code (et al). The combination of the fairly primitive current state of them and the pace at which they're advancing means there is a lot of very obvious ideas/low-hanging fruit that will soon be executed 100x better by the people who own the core technology.

AffableSpatula•35m ago

yeah I tend to agree. They're must be reaching the point where they can automate the analysis of claude code prompts to extract techniques and build them directly into the harness. Going up against that is brave!

wild_pointer•58m ago

Listen team lead and the whole team, make this button red.

AffableSpatula•56m ago

ha! The default system prompt appears to give the main agent appropriate guidance about only using swarm mode when appropriate (same as entering itself into plan mode). You can further prompt it in your own CLAUDE.md to be even more resistant to using the mode if the task at hand isn't significant enough to warrant it.

dlojudice•47m ago

It feels like Auto-GPT, BabyAGI, and the like were simply ahead of their time

woeirua•38m ago

Had to wait for the models to catch up...

nehalem•47m ago

Answering the question how to sell more tokens per customer while maintaining ~~mediocre~~ breakthrough results.

AffableSpatula•37m ago

Delegation patterns like swarm lead to less token usage because:

1. Subagents doing work have a fresh context (ie. focused and not working on the top of a larger monolithic context) 2. Subagents enjoying a more compact context leads to better reasoning, more effective problem solving, less tokens burned.

neom•44m ago

Claude Code in the desktop app seems to do this? It's crazy to watch. It sets of these huge swarms of worker readers under master task headings, that go off and explore the code base and compile huge reports and todo lists, then another system behind the scenes seems to be compiling everything to large master schemas/plans. I create helper files and then have a devops chat, a front end chat, an architecture chat and a security chat, and once each it done it's work it automatically writes to a log and the others pick up the log (it seems to have a system reminder process build in that can push updates from other chats into other chats. It's really wild to watch it work, and it's very intuitive and fun to use. I've not tried CLI claude code only claude code in the desktop app, but desktop app sftp to a droplet with ssh for it to use the terminal is a very very interesting experience, it can seem to just go for hours building, fixing, checking it's own work, loading it's work in the browser, doing more work etc all on it's own - it's how I built this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46724896 in 3 days.

deaux•29m ago

Sounds very similar to oh-my-opencode.

jswny•11m ago

That’s just spawning multiple parallel explore agents instructed to look at different things, and then compiling results

That’s a pretty basic functionality in Claude code

neom•7m ago

Sounds like I should probably switch to claude code cli. Thanks for the info. :)

lysace•41m ago

I'm already burning through enough tokens and producing more code than can be maintained - with just one claude worker. Feel like I need to move into the other direction, more personal hands-on "management".

AffableSpatula•23m ago

I've seen more efficient use of tokens by using delegation. Unless you continually compact or summarise and clear a single main agent - you end up doing work on top of a large context; burning tokens. If the work is delegated to subagents they have a fresh context which avoids this whilst improving their reasoning, which both improve token efficiency.

storystarling•18m ago

I've found the opposite to be true when building this out with LangGraph. While the subagent contexts are cleaner, the orchestration overhead usually ends up costing more. You burn a surprising amount of tokens just summarizing state and passing it between the supervisor and workers. The coordination tax is real.

AffableSpatula•11m ago

Task sizing is important. You can address this by including guidance in the CLAUDE.md around that ie. give it heuristics to use to figure out how to size tasks. Mine includes some heuristics and T shirt sizing methodology. Works great!

MetaMonk•33m ago

A guy who worked at docker on docker swarm now works at Anthropic so makes sense

brookst•4m ago

Probably a beekeeper in spare time

basedrum•18m ago

How is this different from GSD: https://github.com/glittercowboy/get-shit-done

I've been using that and it's excellent

AffableSpatula•15m ago

a similar question was asked elsewhere in the thread; the difference is that this is tightly integrated into the harness

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