The Drawbacks of Using Claude.ai
October 15, 2025
TL;DR for busy professionals:
- Claude codes like a brilliant junior developer —
and here's how to compensate for that.
- I've
managed to break Claude (and figured out how to fix it).
-
My real pain is Claude's presentations and artifacts (and
why).
- Sometimes Claude doesn't know something — and
that's OK (easy fix).
- I still love Claude — she
gives me a 48× productivity multiplier.
In a previous
post, I promised to write about the drawbacks of using
Claude.ai.
I've been delaying it — because,
honestly, I've struggled to find any.
I've
been using Claude for about three months, and I meant it when I
wrote that Claude has been my de-facto cofounder while I search
for a human one.
- Someone to bounce ideas with.
-
Erudite. Available 24/7. Eager to help.
- All for $20 per
month.
Claude has built the entire MVP prototype for
my startup Remake.ai — and I could not be happier with the
results.
But, yes — there are drawbacks. Let's
get into them.
1. (As of the date of this post) Claude codes like a
brilliant, yet junior developer
Claude's first-pass implementations
consistently look like the work of a brilliant but junior
dev.
Here's my workflow:
I prompt Claude to
implement a feature — without over-specifying how. Claude builds
it the way she prefers. Then I test it. Usually, I ask for
refactors: break large files apart, adjust class structure,
improve reusability.
I prefer it this way.
Because
I'm developing a non-standard system, I often don't
know the final structure yet.
Claude's first pass
helps me see possibilities I wouldn't have thought of.
Claude
needs senior-level supervision — someone who can architect,
review, and guide. Without that, the codebase will quickly turn
messy. I feel that consistently.
When I combine
Claude's energy with my architectural judgment, the result
is stunning - a year of work done in a month, while personally
coding maybe 25% of it. That's my 48× productivity
multiplier.
2. How I broke Claude (and how to fix it)
Sometimes, Claude just... gets the flu.
Performance
drops, attention to detail slips.
Once I noticed the
async keyword missing in front of some Python functions. I
prompted Claude to fix that - and offhandedly referred to those
functions as "non-async,"
A couple of
prompts later, I noticed Claude started forgetting to prepend
async during refactoring throughout the code base.
I
realized the issue was probably me, my inaccurate prompting.
The
fix:
- Start a new chat to reset context. Claude recovers
instantly.
3. (As of the date of this post) My real pain: Claude's
presentations and artifacts
This one really hurts.
Claude makes great
presentations — in HTML.
Not PowerPoint. Not Google
Slides.
HTML.
If you've ever tried
converting HTML slides to PowerPoint, you know the pain.
My
current workflow:
- Edit HTML + CSS by hand.
-
Take screenshots of each slide.
- Paste into PowerPoint or
Google Slides.
- Resize until fonts look right.
-
Export to PDF.
Yes, it works. But it feels like
building slides before PowerPoint existed.
Longer
decks (15–20 slides) often break mid-generation. Claude usually
fixes them — but it can take 5–10 iterations before I get a
clean version.
Still, I'll take that over
writing decks from scratch.
4. Sometimes Claude doesn't know something
Rarely, but this can happen. Specifically, I had to
help Claude when coding for the ROS2 robotics platform.
Claude
assumed a certain way to run a ROS2 node, which failed during
testing.
My fix - I give Claude a working example
file. She reads it, adapts instantly, and corrects herself.
With
the right example, Claude becomes an instant domain expert.
5. Debugging and testing
Claude debugs surprisingly well — but someone still
needs to act as the architect, debugger, and systems
engineer.
In my project she installs npm modules,
Python libraries, sets up venv and runs tests, but I usually
handle the environment setup — like installing ROS2 or
configuring GPUs.
I use VS Code with Claude's
plugin. It's fantastic — no need for Cursor.
Why I Love Claude (No Matter What)
Because the trade-off is unbeatable.
Claude
writes my code, drafts my business plans, helps me explore
funding strategies, drafts NDAs for manufacturers, and even
gives feedback on resumes.
I can ask (and have asked
over and over):
- "What if I raise early and
aggressively?"
- "What if I bootstrap
longer?"
- "How should I pitch to investors vs
job applicants vs factories in China?"
Claude
answers in seconds — and helps me think harder. That said, it
does take me tens of minutes to digest Claude's advice.
That's my flaw, not Claude's.
So yes,
Claude has flaws.
But overall, she's the best
cofounder I've ever had — energetic, brilliant, and humble
enough to learn.
Final thought:
If you're a founder or engineer considering
using Claude for real-world product work — do it. Just remember:
treat her like a promising junior developer. Guide her with
senior wisdom. And enjoy the 48× speedup.