Three Times Three Thinking
Introduced by: Dave Kaminski
Depth: Medium thread
Dave's hack to make Claude Code think more carefully before acting. He told Claude to consider a decision three times, then do that process three times — "3x3 thinking."
Dave: "I said to it, I want you to think 3 times... I'm gonna consider it, and then I'm gonna look at the options, and then I'm gonna do it. Thank you, Claude. Go do that, but then do that times 3."
What Happened
It helped initially, but then Claude over-applied it:
Dave: "I saw in my code, it over-applied the 3x3 thinking. And then in one case, it saw that there was an error in one of the three, and so that was a blocking move... and it freaked out and didn't know what to do, so it, like, kind of made it up quietly like a child on the side, as opposed to surfacing that for me."
Pete's reaction:
Pete: "The think three times thing is a really cool hack. And I don't ever have Claude do that, because I've got a better way to do it."
Pete's "better way" is Putting Claude on Rails — structure the interaction so Claude doesn't need to triple-check itself.
Related
- Dave's Claude Struggles — the broader context
- Putting Claude on Rails — Pete's alternative approach
- Claude Code — the tool being discussed