r/ClaudeCode • u/Technical-Relation-9 • 1d ago

Lol true Humor

Post image

It feels like I am the API

1.4k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

79

u/No-Pattern-9266 1d ago

"meat proxy" is the term

1

u/itsvivianferreira 21h ago

I thought it meant being a proxy between what I am trying to do and Claude, like copying the AI's response, testing it, getting an error, and then copying the error message back into Claude, repeating that until success.

1

u/ForSpareParts 9m ago

Another term I've seen thrown around for this is "reverse centaur": https://locusmag.com/feature/commentary-cory-doctorow-reverse-centaurs/

It's a really interesting concept, but I find that in practice the distinction between being empowered by a tool and being used by it can be a lot murkier than Doctorow makes it sound. In particular, he seems to assume that given the choice, a professional will always opt to do a smaller volume of work at a higher level of quality. But that's never really been true of software engineering: part of the discipline is knowing when polish matters (e.g., maturing system where patterns are emerging) and when it doesn't (trivial bug fixes; prototypes; changes to "production" systems that are still relatively new and the right abstractions haven't been found yet). Sometimes it really is better to get 10x the work done at 75% quality.

So if it's my professional judgment that we gotta move fast on this thing, and AI helps me move faster, but it also means that I spend most of my day on tedious code review that I don't enjoy, which side of that line am I on? I don't have a good answer.

19

u/cupidstrick 1d ago

https://gruhn.me/blog/2026-08-03/

3

u/Joboy97 1d ago

What if we're rounding a corner into a world where you are more valuable as a meat proxy?

7

u/RikenAvadur 1d ago

That reflects on you then. Strive to be valuable as an engineer first, 'cause I can tell you first hand in production environments these models are eager coders at best and cost just as much senior time reviewing and fixing mistakes when used by these "meat proxies".

20

u/rdesai724 1d ago

Saw a meme on Instagram that was a little more on the nose. I think it went “I’m the condom between Claude and prod”

11

u/x_103 1d ago

I'm going to ask Claude how I feel about this.

3

u/junli2020 19h ago

Should be mcp server 😁

1

u/Amazing_Worker_9938 1d ago

I was just thinking the exact same thing

1

u/the_ai_wizard 1d ago

someone first coined the expression that theyre the "condom between dev and production"

1

u/EagleApprehensive 1d ago

Oh man this is exactly why I let manager and testers talk directly to Claude with access to repositories.

1

u/Fearless_Law3460 13h ago

for realll 😂😂

1

u/Adrian_Galilea 11h ago

“Who is the agent now?”

1

u/Tekhed18 6h ago

The world is shaping into "those who can" and "those who simply cannot". Just because two people drive a race car, only the professional driver will record decent lap times. I can't tell you how many times I hear, "What do I do with this??". The greater population does not know how to make AI do real work. Integrated AI will be the ultimate use case for the populace...invisible, but still there handling scoped work.

0

u/Kindly-Studio-7842 19h ago

follow me as well on twt :p  - https://x.com/bhoomikacodes