Patrick McKenzie (patio11) walks through a coding session with Claude Code to demonstrate what the fuss is about. The business problem: recovering failed subscription payments that required coordinating APIs across Stripe, Ghost, and email providers, and the surprising experience of watching Claude read documentation, resolve dependency conflicts, and make sensible security choices. The episode offers a pedantic level of detail on why the sharpest technologists use words like “fundamentally transformed” to describe the impact of LLMs on coding.

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Full annotated transcript available here: www.complexsystemspodcast.com/claude-code/

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Links:

• Odd Lots episode with Noah Brier: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2fd3hvYmplEnQzxYZaxPg3?si=ylFxFe3HQ4uivH29uqC_rA
• Bits about Money: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/

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Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(02:21) All engineering work happens in a business context

(03:47) Payment failures briefly taxonomized

(08:25) Now follows a conversation with Claude Code

(20:37) Sponsor: Framer

(21:53) Conversation with Claude Code (continued)

(39:07) My final thoughts on this

(41:15) Wrap