alt Hacker NewsWhat happens when you have a codebase made with claude using this setup and claude is down for let's say 8 hours? Are you able to efficiently, smoothly and productively take over the codebase?
Replies
You could say the same thing about any always online software suite and it would be equally fair as we move into more agentic development workflows.
EX. Sure, you could go back to the old ways of using a drafting table for your engineering work if CAD went down but it would be exponentially slower…
Personally with my workflow I spend 30-60 minutes per Claude feature spec doc when I’m pair planning. If Claude goes down I would just prepare spec docs on my own until it came back online and then rapidly review them before calling the coding workflow.
I assume it will be similar to when a person is out sick or on vacation. Another person on the team likely could take over the work for a day, but realistically it just sits until they're is back.
After 1 hour you asked the question, I am reading the replies and the conclusion is: no, they cannot.
Claude Code CLI is just a software package, if Anthropic API is down you could always connect Deepseek/other provider API to Claude Code CLI...
Just use a fallback, like Codex CLI. Takes a little effort upfront to ensure your configuration is wired correctly for both harnesses, but it is pretty easy to get them 90% identical (there will almost always be some experimental / edge case features that differ across harnesses, but in my experience those are negligible in practice).
What happens when you have a codebase made with gcc for let's say 8 hours? Are you able to efficiently, smoothly and productively take over the assembly code?
AI should enhance your skills. If it's down and your first though is to buy another sub from a different vendor this might be a skill issue. (I'm afraid every day that this will happen to me btw.)