I’ve been noticing this trend lately (especially when starting new chats) that honestly feels a bit uncanny. It looks like Claude Code in Ultracode and Codex in Ultra tend to… overthink(!?). It’s almost like forcing a junior engineer to stand up the entire stack on day one while standing over their shoulder (if you’re that kind of manager/lead/SME/whatever… there’s really no need for that unless your real goal is to bring any sort of value to your new member). The model starts to stutter, panic, and ends up trying everything and nothing at the same time. I’ve tested this with lean harnesses, memory turned off, fresh chats, you name it. And surprisingly enough, this behavior is remarkably consistent atm. Have yall experienced something similar? I’ve been vibe engineering (yeh I’ll save the whole “vibe coding vs. vibe engineering” discussion for another time) for quite a while now, and this is the first time I’ve observed this behavior so consistently. It’s gotten to the point where I almost always default to using two effort ticks below the highest available setting. submitted by /u/Remarkable-Camera106
Originally posted by u/Remarkable-Camera106 on r/ClaudeCode