00:00:00Should you be using GSD or should you be using superpowers?
00:00:04Or are both a waste of time?
00:00:06To answer that question,
00:00:07I did a head-to-head-to-head test with superpowers,
00:00:10GSD and vanilla Claude code.
00:00:13I had them create the exact same web app
00:00:15and we grade them on their final output,
00:00:17the amount of tokens used
00:00:18and how long it takes them to build it.
00:00:20And the winner is not the one you would expect.
00:00:23Now, before we run the head-to-head tests
00:00:25between GSD, superpowers and baseline Claude code,
00:00:28let's first talk very quickly
00:00:30about what GSD and superpowers actually are,
00:00:33how they work and how they differ between one another.
00:00:35So GSD and superpowers are cut from the same cloth.
00:00:40These are both orchestration layers
00:00:41that sit on top of Claude code
00:00:43and change the way how Claude code approaches
00:00:46complex projects.
00:00:48It introduces a much more robust planning system,
00:00:50a much more robust testing system,
00:00:52and they both utilize sub-agent driven development
00:00:56to deal with context rot.
00:00:57And the similarities become even more obvious
00:00:59when we take a look at their actual step-by-step process.
00:01:02Superpowers and its first three steps, what is it doing?
00:01:05It's planning stuff.
00:01:06It brainstorms, it uses get work trees,
00:01:09and then it writes plans.
00:01:10What does GSD do?
00:01:12GSD starts a new project, discusses the plan,
00:01:15and then breaks the plan down into phases.
00:01:17They're taking your big idea
00:01:19and they're chunking it up into smaller,
00:01:21specific atomic tasks that they are gonna have sub-agents
00:01:25deliver on down the line.
00:01:27Once the plan has been figured out, what does superpowers do?
00:01:30It does sub-agent driven development.
00:01:32Again, I keep referencing this.
00:01:33Instead of having Claude code
00:01:35execute everything in the same session,
00:01:36like the normal plan mode into execution does,
00:01:40filling up your context window all the time,
00:01:42instead, these sub-agents each get assigned a specific task.
00:01:45That way, they have essentially a clean context window,
00:01:48which means they should give us better outputs.
00:01:51And so that's what happens in step four and five,
00:01:53although it also includes test-driven development
00:01:55or superpowers.
00:01:56The GSD side of things, it's just one step, execute phase.
00:02:01It's pretty much doing step four and five from superpowers
00:02:04in its step four.
00:02:05Then we finish up.
00:02:06Superpowers requests a code review
00:02:09and then merges everything.
00:02:10What does GSD do?
00:02:12It verifies the work and then it shifts it,
00:02:14commits, creates the PRs, done.
00:02:16So very, very similar.
00:02:18And when we talk about the differences, it's pretty subtle.
00:02:21When it comes to superpowers,
00:02:22it's very heavy on test-driven development
00:02:25and this idea of red-green refactors.
00:02:28If we take a look at the actual test-driven development skill
00:02:31inside of superpowers, what does it talk about?
00:02:33It talks about the iron law,
00:02:35no production code without a failing test first.
00:02:37So anytime it's trying to create code for a feature,
00:02:40it creates a test for that feature.
00:02:41It fails the test first,
00:02:44and then it tries to write the minimal amount of code needed
00:02:47to pass that test.
00:02:48From there, it goes into red-green refactor.
00:02:50And if you wanna see the specifics of it,
00:02:52you can take a look at the skills inside of the GitHub.
00:02:53I'll link all this down below.
00:02:55On the other hand, GSD really emphasizes state and context.
00:02:59So it's constantly creating markdown files
00:03:01that reference what you're planning to do,
00:03:03what you've already done,
00:03:05and what's gonna get completed in the future.
00:03:06And things like the requirements of markdown file,
00:03:08the roadmap markdown file, the different phases.
00:03:11It's very explicit and it writes down everything.
00:03:13And the idea with that is with so much sub-agent execution
00:03:16and so much content resetting,
00:03:19we always want some sort of North Star telling us
00:03:21where we are and where we're going.
00:03:23That's GSD's idea.
00:03:24But really those differences are subtle.
00:03:26So a lot of it also comes down to feel,
00:03:28which is what we're going to see today.
00:03:29The other things we're gonna be looking at
00:03:31is the amount of time it takes
00:03:32for each of these to execute the task I'm gonna give it,
00:03:35as well as the amount of tokens,
00:03:36'cause cost is something we always need to be cognizant of.
00:03:39But with that being said, installing these is very simple.
00:03:41Superpowers is in the official plugin library on Claude Code.
00:03:45So if you're inside of Claude Code and you do /plugin,
00:03:48you will be able to see Superpowers right there
00:03:50and install it that way.
00:03:51And with GSD, you just need to run this one command
00:03:53and it will install everything.
00:03:55So what is our test gonna look like
00:03:56for these three guys today?
00:03:57Well, we are gonna have all three of them build us a website
00:04:00for our AI agency, Chase AI.
00:04:02And this website needs three things.
00:04:04One, it needs a landing page.
00:04:06This is the simplest ask.
00:04:08I just want a standard landing page, hero section,
00:04:11and about me services, and then a lead capture form.
00:04:14So this is where we're testing them on a very simple ask.
00:04:17And also I wanna see how they do with web design
00:04:20and skill calling.
00:04:21Are they gonna use the front end design skills?
00:04:23'Cause I'm not gonna explicitly tell them.
00:04:25For two and three,
00:04:25it's all about creating our blog generator.
00:04:27So for step two, I want there to be a page
00:04:30that allows people to see my blog
00:04:32where they can see the different posts,
00:04:34click on them, read them, little basic stuff.
00:04:36And then number three is the actual blog generator itself.
00:04:39This is a hidden admin page.
00:04:40I don't want it on the nav bar.
00:04:42And I wanna be able to give my webpage
00:04:44either a YouTube video URL or an article URL.
00:04:48I then want it to scrape everything from that URL.
00:04:51I want it to use the anthropic SDK
00:04:53to then create a clean blog post based on that information
00:04:57from the YouTube video or the article in my voice.
00:05:01I also want it to grab the thumbnail or hero image
00:05:03from the source and then save it all as a new blog.
00:05:06For time's sake, I'm not doing any authentication here.
00:05:08I'm confident all three of these would be able
00:05:10to execute that just fine with the SupaBase CLI.
00:05:13I then give them both a basic tech stack
00:05:15as well as some sort of aesthetic guidance.
00:05:18But the point here is to give them enough of a direction
00:05:22so we can all grade them on the same thing
00:05:24yet leave enough wiggle room
00:05:26so they aren't just following directions.
00:05:28I wanna see how they think through this prompt.
00:05:30And that's because we left certain things
00:05:32open to interpretation,
00:05:33like how to actually fetch the transcripts.
00:05:36How do I actually get the thumbnails
00:05:38from YouTube URLs I give it.
00:05:39What the actual blog generation system prompt should look like.
00:05:42What should that voice be?
00:05:44And again, whether to invoke any specific cloud code skills.
00:05:47So these are all different things
00:05:50that we should see variance in between GSD superpowers
00:05:54and out of the box cloud code.
00:05:55So I just released my cloud code masterclass last month
00:06:03and it is the number one way to go from zero to AI dev,
00:06:06especially if you do not come from a technical background.
00:06:09I teach you everything you need to know about this tool
00:06:11and we focus on real use cases.
00:06:14And just as importantly,
00:06:15I update this thing literally every week.
00:06:18And since its inception,
00:06:19we've already added almost three hours of additional content.
00:06:23You can find a link to it in the pin comment
00:06:24inside of Chase AI+ and we'd love to have you there.
00:06:27So let's get this test started.
00:06:28I have GSD superpowers and cloud code here.
00:06:32I will be very specific about which tab I'm in
00:06:34so you don't get confused,
00:06:36but I also have the status line down here,
00:06:37which will explicitly state which directory I'm in
00:06:40because they're all in different directories.
00:06:42So for superpowers,
00:06:43we can see that it loaded the superpowers
00:06:46brainstorming skill.
00:06:47And with superpowers, it's pretty fluid.
00:06:50It has like 14, 15 plus skills loaded
00:06:54when you actually install the superpowers plugin.
00:06:57And the idea is cloud code knows
00:07:00just based on how you're talking to it
00:07:02and where you are in the process,
00:07:03which skill it needs to invoke.
00:07:05This is a little different than GSD
00:07:07where you are going to use explicit slash commands
00:07:10like GSD new project when you are using GSD
00:07:13in your directory.
00:07:14So GSD was actually the first one to come back
00:07:17with some sort of questioning after the first couple minutes.
00:07:19So GSD was the first to come back with some questioning.
00:07:22It said our brief was pretty complete
00:07:24because we did give it a fairly robust prompt.
00:07:27But what I do like is it says,
00:07:28hey, here's some taste calls I'm making.
00:07:30And right away, it's calling out a few of the things
00:07:32that we mentioned that could be differentiators,
00:07:34things that we didn't include in the prompt.
00:07:37So we never specified what services
00:07:39we wanted on the landing page, it gives us four options.
00:07:41And then it calls out what it's gonna do for YouTube
00:07:43when it comes to the transcript, as well as the hero image.
00:07:46So I'm gonna go ahead and let it create the project.md file.
00:07:49Now let's take a look at superpowers.
00:07:51So right off the bat, superpowers says
00:07:52it's going to skip the visual companion offer.
00:07:55I'm gonna say I want the visual companion offer
00:07:58because that actually is one of the big differentiators
00:08:00between superpowers and GSD.
00:08:02So I would like to see it in action.
00:08:03And right away, it brings up some design decisions,
00:08:06specifically things for fetching the URL,
00:08:09which again, just like with GSD was one of those things
00:08:11we kind of left it for interpretation.
00:08:13It gives us three options with pros and cons,
00:08:16as well as a recommendation.
00:08:17And then it breaks down the actual thumbnail strategy.
00:08:19So it's a bit more in depth when it came back
00:08:22with these sort of suggestions than GSD was.
00:08:24And that same story plays out here with services,
00:08:27design system, as well as error handling and edge cases.
00:08:30So overall, it's been a bit more in depth
00:08:33with everything it's come back with.
00:08:34So I wrote this looks good,
00:08:35but I would still like to go through the visual companion
00:08:38to make sure we are locked in on the front end aesthetic.
00:08:41And it came back with the visual companion,
00:08:44which is one of its coolest features.
00:08:46So it spun up a dev server,
00:08:48and now it's asking me what we should do for the aesthetic.
00:08:50And it has actual options,
00:08:51four of them right in front of you, which I really like,
00:08:53because it's one thing when it tells you
00:08:56what it's gonna do visually,
00:08:58and spins up one dev server for one options.
00:09:00It's much different when you can see everything all at once.
00:09:03This is one of my favorite part of superpowers.
00:09:04Now, with that being said, these are all very samey.
00:09:08None of these totally jump out at me.
00:09:11Of all these, I would say probably
00:09:13the warm editorial is the best.
00:09:15Electric lime is gross, monochrome is boring,
00:09:18and linear polish just looks like AI slop.
00:09:20Oh, we'll go with this one for now.
00:09:24At least it's something visual.
00:09:25I love the visual companion.
00:09:27So after I told superpowers I liked option C,
00:09:29now it's giving me some more options to look at.
00:09:32So it took that aesthetic, those sort of colors,
00:09:34and now we're going into the hero section.
00:09:35So it continues to drill down on the webpage.
00:09:40So this is the first hero.
00:09:44The second one's a bit more centered.
00:09:46We have the third one with some stuff over here.
00:09:51Split with the featured look.
00:09:53I think, you know, in reality,
00:10:00I would probably do something like this
00:10:03and cut out what's here 'cause this is kind of lame,
00:10:05but I like this as a template, right?
00:10:06This is what we can start with.
00:10:09So we'll go with C.
00:10:10Now superpowers visual companion takes you
00:10:12through every section of your landing page.
00:10:15So we'll skip the rest of them
00:10:17'cause I think you get the point.
00:10:18So superpowers has now written the spec for our website
00:10:21and it's asking us to review it.
00:10:23Once we take a look at it and we give it the thumbs up,
00:10:25then it's actually going to use the writing plan skill
00:10:28to produce the implementation plan.
00:10:30So this is kind of the rough draft blueprint
00:10:32of what it's going to do.
00:10:33And here's a look at that design spec.
00:10:35It is very comprehensive,
00:10:38but the part you should be taking a look at is at the bottom
00:10:41and that is the key judgment calls.
00:10:43What are decisions that superpowers has made for you
00:10:45up until this point?
00:10:46'Cause this is where you need to provide some pushback
00:10:47if you haven't.
00:10:48So it's going to do slash studio as the hidden URL
00:10:50where we sort of do all the actual blog content generation,
00:10:54uses writing as the nav label,
00:10:56talks about the generated voice.
00:10:59So, ah, used to be a marine pilot.
00:11:00Now he's an AI consultant, all right, easy enough.
00:11:03And it did that off of its actual user level cloud memory.
00:11:07And it kind of talks about security.
00:11:08Like I said, we aren't doing authentication here
00:11:11purely for the demo.
00:11:12And it's even like, oh, that's kind of weird.
00:11:13I guess we're just doing security by obscurity.
00:11:15So it calls it out.
00:11:17So I'm just going to tell superpowers that it looks good.
00:11:19And now it's actually going to write out the plan
00:11:21and you can see that skill being loaded.
00:11:23So while we were doing all of that with superpowers,
00:11:25GSC has been executing its own research
00:11:28before it built out its plan.
00:11:29So it spawned four researchers in parallel.
00:11:32One for stack research, one for features research,
00:11:35and then two more for architecture and pitfalls research.
00:11:38You can see that right here.
00:11:39Each of these uses a hefty amount of tokens, right?
00:11:4275K, 33K, 51 and 61.
00:11:46But the idea is if you're doing something rather novel
00:11:49or that isn't very common,
00:11:52these sorts of researchers are going to work wonders
00:11:55in the long run.
00:11:56So what we did today is,
00:11:58or what we are doing today is fairly straightforward.
00:12:00Web design, blog generator, it's seen these things before.
00:12:03I still had it execute these researcher agents
00:12:06just to keep this test equal, so to speak.
00:12:10So then synthesized all of that research.
00:12:13You can see here it uses Sonnet 4.6 for this.
00:12:15So even though for the most part,
00:12:17I told GSD to go wild with Opus 4.6,
00:12:20when it feels like it's just synthesizing information
00:12:23and it's not sending someone out to do something novel
00:12:25or unique for that project,
00:12:27it will use smaller, cheaper models to do the synthesis.
00:12:30And this four agent research phase
00:12:32is robust compared to Superpowers.
00:12:34Superpowers doesn't really do this.
00:12:36But like I said, 30 tool uses, 91K tokens, 15 minutes.
00:12:39It takes time.
00:12:40Once it does the research,
00:12:41it then defines the requirements.
00:12:43Similar to the MD file we just looked at with Superpowers,
00:12:48GSD does the same thing, but even more.
00:12:51It does multiple documents.
00:12:52So it creates a requirements document.
00:12:54It creates a roadmap document.
00:12:56Really it takes kind of what Superpowers did,
00:12:58but just divvies it up into multiple docs.
00:13:01Those docs being roadmap, state, requirements,
00:13:04and eventually things like phases.
00:13:06And at 35 minutes in, you can tell this takes some time.
00:13:10If we actually pause and take a look at, you know,
00:13:13the standard CLOD code, its plan's been up and ready.
00:13:16We haven't had it execute anything yet for some time.
00:13:19This took total for it, I think about five or six minutes.
00:13:22And that was on the slow side, I felt like,
00:13:24versus GSD, which is still going 36 minutes later
00:13:29and hopping back to Superpowers.
00:13:31Superpowers just finished up its website plan dot markdown.
00:13:35While we wait for GSD to finish up its roadmap
00:13:38and its series of stuff,
00:13:39let's take a look at Superpowers once more.
00:13:41So it just created the website plan dot MD,
00:13:44which includes 28 tasks and 2,500 lines.
00:13:47Jumping back into VS code,
00:13:49if we go down into the docs of this folder
00:13:52and take a look at the specs,
00:13:53sorry, take a look at the implementation plan
00:13:56and said, this is what it's talking about.
00:13:58Like I said, about 10 times longer than the specs.
00:14:03So there's a lot, there's a lot going on here.
00:14:09Now Superpowers offers us two execution options.
00:14:12One is sub-agent driven, which is very similar to GSD
00:14:16where each task gets its own sub-agent
00:14:18and therefore its own context window.
00:14:20But like it says here, that's a trade-off
00:14:22because that's a lot for 28, as it says,
00:14:25mostly straightforward tasks.
00:14:27Like, is this a nuclear bomb option?
00:14:29Do we really need it?
00:14:29The second option is inline execution.
00:14:32So we're essentially just gonna be doing this
00:14:34in the same session, pausing for review as needed.
00:14:37And it's gonna be much, much faster.
00:14:39This inline execution is much more akin
00:14:42to what we're doing here inside the standard cloud code
00:14:45where we're just like, yes, bypass permissions,
00:14:47go forth and conquer.
00:14:48Now, because Superpowers is recommending inline execution,
00:14:50we are gonna go with inline execution.
00:14:52And we can see Superpowers executing plan,
00:14:55skill loaded successfully.
00:14:57So now it's gonna start getting to work.
00:14:58And right on cue, GSD has now finished its grand plan
00:15:03for our project.
00:15:05So it's created a project MD, requirements MD,
00:15:07roadmap MD, state MD, cloud MD.
00:15:09And it also has created a folder
00:15:12for all the research it's found.
00:15:14GSD is proposing eight phases with 65 requirements.
00:15:18And like we've talked about before,
00:15:20when it comes to executing this,
00:15:21GSD is very kind of rigid, slash clear,
00:15:25next slash command, clear, next slash command, right?
00:15:27So it's very dun, dun, dun, dun, next thing,
00:15:30next thing, next thing.
00:15:31And it's like very phased versus, you know,
00:15:34I will say that Superpower is a bit more fluid, right?
00:15:37You kind of just talk through it.
00:15:38It knows how to load the command as needed
00:15:40or you expect it to load the skills as needed.
00:15:43GSD is a bit more clear cut.
00:15:45Now, before we go ahead and begin executing with GSD,
00:15:49remember this is all in the planning phase right now.
00:15:51This is the total token count for its sub agents,
00:15:54just for planning and research.
00:15:56We're at 459,862.
00:16:00What does that mean in terms of usage?
00:16:02Who knows?
00:16:03Totally depends when in the day you're using it,
00:16:05what sort of plan you're on, all that,
00:16:06but 460K give or take for planning.
00:16:09Plus we're at 16% right now, call it 150.
00:16:13Let's give it a nice round number.
00:16:15We're gonna call it 600,000 tokens for GSD
00:16:18in the planning phase.
00:16:19And for total time spent,
00:16:21we'll call it roughly 40 minutes, give or take.
00:16:25Now to compare that to the baseline,
00:16:27the standard Claude code plan phase,
00:16:29that took about 10 minutes and it was about 50,000 tokens.
00:16:33Now as for Superpower's token use in the planning phase,
00:16:36it was about 200,000 tokens.
00:16:38So Superpower's 200,000, GSD 600,000, Claude code 50,000.
00:16:47Claude code 10 minutes, Superpower's 40 minutes,
00:16:51GSD about 40 minutes.
00:16:53So that is one of the big differences,
00:16:54A, between the two orchestration layers
00:16:56and standard Claude code is the amount of time.
00:16:58But in terms of token usage between GSD and Superpower's,
00:17:02big difference there because GSD is very heavy
00:17:05on the research.
00:17:06Like you saw, four parallel sub-agents
00:17:09doing a bunch of planning.
00:17:10Now, was that necessary for this project?
00:17:14Perhaps not.
00:17:15But for a big project, understand it will be necessary
00:17:18and that token difference will be there.
00:17:20But that is just one checkpoint,
00:17:21the planning and research phase.
00:17:23Now it's time for execution.
00:17:25Claude code has already started,
00:17:27Superpower's has already started,
00:17:28and I'm gonna kick off GSD as well.
00:17:30Now when it comes to the execution phase,
00:17:32specifically with GSD, it's more hands-on than the others.
00:17:36It's not like, okay, we did planning and research,
00:17:38it wrote its thing, I can just tell it go
00:17:40and I can just like leave for 30 minutes
00:17:42and come back to finish project.
00:17:43Each phase is probably going to require
00:17:46some level of input from you.
00:17:47If nothing else, to kick it off.
00:17:49Because what it wants to do is it wants to ask you
00:17:51to first discuss each phase to make sure
00:17:55you're on the exact same page with Claude code
00:17:58as to what's in your mind, right?
00:18:00What do you want that feature to actually do?
00:18:01What do you want that thing to actually look like?
00:18:03It gets very, very detailed.
00:18:05On one hand, kind of annoying, let's be honest.
00:18:07On the other hand, if this is something very complex,
00:18:09it's probably important that you get that right.
00:18:11So these are things you have to weigh and measure.
00:18:15And what we're going to weigh and measure is,
00:18:17at the end of the day, that all this back and forth
00:18:19actually give us a better product.
00:18:21So for the sake of your time,
00:18:23I'm not going to show you every single phase in GSD.
00:18:27Again, check the video I linked earlier
00:18:29where I do that with GSD,
00:18:31if you really want to see it play out.
00:18:32Just understand that's one of the big differences
00:18:34within GSD and superpowers.
00:18:37And obviously, Claude code as well.
00:18:40So speaking of superpowers,
00:18:42at this point, implementation is complete.
00:18:44We are at a total spend of 250K tokens
00:18:47and 15 minutes have passed since the planning phase.
00:18:49So it's asking me what we want to do and it recommends,
00:18:52let's just keep the branch as is.
00:18:54So I'm just going to say, "Hey, we'll go with your rec."
00:18:56Superpowers then comes back with a summary of what it's built,
00:18:59what it's verified working,
00:19:01things it couldn't verify
00:19:02that needs some sort of manual verification or changes,
00:19:05and then judgment calls it made.
00:19:07And at this point, I'm also going to update my API key
00:19:10so it actually works.
00:19:11Okay, so they all finally finished their execution.
00:19:14So what we're looking at now is their one-shot product.
00:19:18Right here, we have GSD, superpowers,
00:19:22and the baseline Claude code.
00:19:24Now for reference, for how long this all took,
00:19:27upfront GSD by far took the longest to get to this point.
00:19:30All this was off screen of me going through each phase,
00:19:33having it plan, having it execute.
00:19:35That took, frankly, over an hour.
00:19:38And total token spend for the execution phase for GSD
00:19:41was 600,000.
00:19:42So we were looking at total
00:19:44from the beginning of planning phase
00:19:46to having our one-shot being 1.2 million tokens
00:19:50in an hour and 45 minutes to get to this point.
00:19:52For superpowers, it only took about
00:19:54an additional 50,000 tokens for execution in about 15 minutes.
00:19:59So total time, total tokens for superpowers
00:20:02to go from first prompt to actual product
00:20:05was one hour total time, 250K tokens.
00:20:10And for Claude code, we were looking at 200,000 total tokens
00:20:14in about 15 minutes.
00:20:16So kind of wild, the difference there,
00:20:19GSD being by far the longest and the heaviest,
00:20:23and as expected, standard out-of-the-box Claude code
00:20:27being the fastest.
00:20:28So let's see if all that time and token spend was worth it.
00:20:30We're looking at GSD right here,
00:20:32and just sort of a plain background, right?
00:20:37Everything is black, pretty much.
00:20:40Very basic.
00:20:44We have sort of the orange coloring.
00:20:45Like this doesn't look terrible, but like this isn't,
00:20:48you know, you're not blown away.
00:20:50It's like, okay, this was first pass by AI.
00:20:52Like everything looks pretty standard.
00:20:54When I click on the blog,
00:20:55the blog is here with some example stuff.
00:20:58And you know, this looks fine as well.
00:21:01Now let's look at the blog generation piece of it,
00:21:04that little behind the scenes studio page.
00:21:06But when I follow the link, it gives me, we get a 404.
00:21:11So the blog studio generator doesn't even work
00:21:14on the first pass.
00:21:15So I told GSD what the issue is.
00:21:16So it's working on it right now.
00:21:18While it does that,
00:21:19let's take a look at what Superpowers gave us.
00:21:21So here's what Superpowers came back with.
00:21:22And the front end design looks just like what we saw
00:21:25in the visual companion.
00:21:26And again, nothing special.
00:21:28The Claude code as a rule kind of sucks at front end design.
00:21:32If you don't give it really, really good instructions
00:21:35or just load it with a ton of skills.
00:21:37And so, because we kind of left taste and front end design
00:21:41and design work in general of the interpretation,
00:21:43we got something that looks like it was made by AI.
00:21:45So this is okay.
00:21:47It's fine as a base.
00:21:48Here's a look at the blog.
00:21:50It's got pictures and you know, whole blog setup is there.
00:21:56If I go to the studio section,
00:21:58this does work on the first pass.
00:22:01I can see the generator.
00:22:02And if I put in a link to one of my recent videos
00:22:05and it creates a draft for us,
00:22:06grabs a correct thumbnail.
00:22:08And then what it talks about is actually correct.
00:22:09Cause in that video, I talk about things like codecs
00:22:12inside of Claude code, Obsidian and auto research.
00:22:16So it did exactly what it said it was going to do,
00:22:20which is great.
00:22:20Now here's a look at just Claude code out of the box.
00:22:24So pretty standard stuff, nothing crazy.
00:22:29You know, like if we're honest,
00:22:30is there a huge difference in terms of the front end design?
00:22:33If we don't give it great instructions between this
00:22:36and this and this?
00:22:39No, there really isn't, to be totally honest.
00:22:43You could tell me any one of these three
00:22:46created any one of these three
00:22:47and I would not be able to tell the difference.
00:22:49So let's take a look at the blog.
00:22:52Has some fake articles for us and you know,
00:22:57looks fine, very bland,
00:23:00nothing really going on there, but it works.
00:23:02Now let's see if the studio,
00:23:05the blog generator piece works for this.
00:23:08And just like with GSD, this doesn't work.
00:23:11Gives me the link 404 page can't be found.
00:23:14So just like with GSD,
00:23:15I told base Claude code to go ahead and fix this.
00:23:18And while it's attempting to fix a blog generator,
00:23:21let's go back and see what GSD did on its second attempt.
00:23:24Looks like GSD was able to figure it out.
00:23:27Let's paste the URL in here
00:23:29and see if it generates a draft.
00:23:30All right, so it comes back with this draft and markdown.
00:23:33I do like that.
00:23:34The fact that I can kind of edit things in line very quickly.
00:23:39And as for the actual content, it matches what it should.
00:23:41So it did a good job there.
00:23:44And then I can see the actual preview, which is great.
00:23:48So to be honest, I like GSD's implementation of this
00:23:51with the upfront sort of inline editor,
00:23:54more so than I liked superpowers.
00:23:55And we can see it now inside of our blog.
00:23:58And now lastly, we are back with the out of the box
00:24:01baseline Claude code.
00:24:03It fixed its errors.
00:24:04And now we have a look at the blog generator
00:24:06and similar to superpowers.
00:24:08Once I gave it, it just created it automatically.
00:24:11It doesn't give me any chance to edit it
00:24:13or see it as a draft like GSD did,
00:24:15but here's a low res thumbnail
00:24:18and it grabbed all the correct information.
00:24:20And here it is inside of the actual blog page.
00:24:23So what can we take away from all this?
00:24:24Which one of these three actually won
00:24:27in this head to head competition?
00:24:28Well, let's do a quick recap.
00:24:30In terms of total time spent on the task,
00:24:33Claude code just out of the box was about 20 minutes.
00:24:37Superpowers took about an hour
00:24:39and GSD came in at 105 minutes, an hour 45.
00:24:43In terms of tokens, Claude code was about 200K.
00:24:48Superpowers, 250K.
00:24:51And then GSD was 1.2 million tokens.
00:24:56So those are the objective stats.
00:24:59In terms of the subjective,
00:25:00like how did we think they actually did
00:25:02on what they created?
00:25:04Do we have any super strong opinions one way or the other?
00:25:08The answer probably is no.
00:25:11The answer probably is if I actually had mixed all these up
00:25:14and then now had some grand reveal that,
00:25:16oh no, this was actually superpowers that did this one.
00:25:19And this was out of the box, Claude code.
00:25:22You wouldn't care.
00:25:23You wouldn't even know the difference.
00:25:24The only real difference out of all these
00:25:26was that superpower was actually able to do
00:25:27what it was supposed to do on the first attempt
00:25:30for whatever credit you wanna give it for doing a one shot.
00:25:35I mean, truth be told, if it one shots it, great.
00:25:36If you get it on the second attempt, that's fine with me too.
00:25:40The thing you're probably thinking right now too is,
00:25:42well, test is flawed.
00:25:44This wasn't a complicated enough test
00:25:46to where superpowers and certainly GSD
00:25:49could sort of pull away from the pack.
00:25:51The problem with that line of reasoning is,
00:25:53okay, then what is the line in the sand
00:25:55for now this theoretical task is complicated enough
00:25:58to use something like GSD
00:26:00or to use something like superpowers
00:26:02to justify really the time,
00:26:03even more so than the tokens for a lot of people.
00:26:06Is that clear?
00:26:07Is that obvious?
00:26:09I would argue, no, not really.
00:26:11It really isn't.
00:26:12However, we can't admit theoretically,
00:26:16yeah, there probably some ultra complicated task
00:26:18that this makes sense.
00:26:19The problem is defining that and knowing ahead of time.
00:26:21Because if you are wrong about the complexity
00:26:26of the task in front of you and you choose wrong
00:26:29and you go with say GSD or you just go with superpowers,
00:26:32you just cost yourself 40 minutes versus Claude code
00:26:36or 80 minutes if you went the GSD route.
00:26:39That's a big deal.
00:26:41Because truth be told, if I did this again
00:26:43and you asked me who was the winner out of these three today,
00:26:46it was Claude code and it isn't even close.
00:26:48Why?
00:26:48It's not even the tokens, it's the time.
00:26:50Sure, you could probably say this was the worst
00:26:53out of the bunch if we're splitting hairs, but guess what?
00:26:56Maybe it's the worst,
00:26:57but I just got 40 extra minutes to work on it.
00:26:59Or I got 80 extra minutes to work on it versus GSD.
00:27:02Which one do you think is gonna be better?
00:27:04This GSD one I just created?
00:27:06Or me and Claude code with 80 more minutes?
00:27:09Or me and Claude code with 40 more minutes?
00:27:11Should be kind of obvious, right?
00:27:15So, you know, where do I stand at the end of this?
00:27:20Well, my take is that you kind of need a good reason
00:27:25to use these orchestration layers.
00:27:26If I was going to use one today, it would be superpowers.
00:27:31If I was doing a task that I didn't know
00:27:33if it was gonna be too complicated, right?
00:27:35That imaginary line in the sand
00:27:36that nobody knows where it actually lies,
00:27:39and I think we might be getting close,
00:27:40I would use superpowers.
00:27:41'Cause I know it's not going to crush me in terms of tokens.
00:27:44And I'll just go do something else for 60 minutes.
00:27:47Versus if I go to GSD,
00:27:49I kinda gotta be there at the keyboard, right?
00:27:52If I wanna get the full use out of it,
00:27:53I gotta go through all the planning stuff.
00:27:55And it's gonna take a long time and cost a lot of tokens.
00:27:58So if I'm wrong, it sucks badly, right?
00:28:01That really hurts to spend that amount of time with GSD.
00:28:03It hurt doing this video, just sitting there,
00:28:05going through all these tasks for an end result
00:28:07that really wasn't worth it.
00:28:08So if I really do think it's gonna be something
00:28:11so complicated that I need superpowers,
00:28:13then okay, I think you can justify that.
00:28:17But if it's really not gonna be that complicated,
00:28:19or even if it is a complicated task,
00:28:21is it just something that we can break down
00:28:23into like different features and slowly add on to it?
00:28:26And by slowly, I mean actually way quicker
00:28:28than the other options,
00:28:29because I'm just using out of the box cloud code,
00:28:32which is way faster than these other options.
00:28:34The other thing is when GSD came out,
00:28:38and I did a video when GSD came out too.
00:28:41Like I really liked GSD at the time.
00:28:42And same thing with superpowers.
00:28:44When these two things came out originally,
00:28:46cloud code wasn't in the place it is today.
00:28:48And I already can hear people complaining,
00:28:51well, cloud codes nerve today.
00:28:52Like that's not what I'm talking about.
00:28:54I'm talking like the way cloud code approaches problems
00:28:56and some of the scaffolding
00:28:57and some of the way the harness itself works.
00:28:59There's a lot like,
00:29:00just for the fact that like when you have a large plan
00:29:03and you want to execute it and ask you,
00:29:04hey, do you want to clear context and do it like this?
00:29:07That wasn't even a thing.
00:29:08Like cloud code was way more susceptible
00:29:10to things like context rot than when GSD first came out.
00:29:12When GSD first came out, I was like,
00:29:14oh my, this is a godsend.
00:29:15It actually handles context the way it should.
00:29:17Well, cloud code has brought in a lot of those things,
00:29:19which is to say the gap between baseline cloud code
00:29:22in these things has shrunk significantly.
00:29:25While at the same time,
00:29:26there is now a huge gap in terms of speed to execution.
00:29:30And we can't not talk about the speed difference.
00:29:34This 20 minutes versus the 60 minutes,
00:29:36the 105 is the biggest difference out of everything.
00:29:38And it's what you should index on a lot,
00:29:41in my opinion, at least.
00:29:44So in conclusion, less is more.
00:29:47I think for 99% of use cases and 99% of users,
00:29:53just using the baseline cloud code makes the most sense.
00:29:56It's going to be quicker.
00:29:57Even if the output isn't better,
00:29:59you have way more time to bridge that gap
00:30:01and actually leap over these other guys.
00:30:03If you think you are doing a project
00:30:05that is that complicated and you want some extra power,
00:30:08use superpowers because it's relatively lightweight
00:30:12versus GSD, which kind of just feels like a behemoth.
00:30:16And it doesn't feel great to use.
00:30:18I'm going to be totally honest.
00:30:19Using superpowers just is much more fluid.
00:30:21I just talked to it, invokes the skills.
00:30:23I'm not having to like, all right,
00:30:25now we're going to forward slash clear.
00:30:27Okay, I'm in a new set, it's a bit much.
00:30:29And I get why GSD2 came out, right?
00:30:32GC 2.0 was meant to alleviate those problems.
00:30:35But guess what?
00:30:36That doesn't work either
00:30:37because you can't use the cloud code max planet,
00:30:38which means I'm paying absurd prices.
00:30:40So, you know, so much for that.
00:30:45So hopefully that sheds some light
00:30:46on this whole thing for you.
00:30:47I think if you stick with standard vanilla cloud code,
00:30:49you're going to be just fine.
00:30:50Have superpowers in your back pocket if you really need it.
00:30:53Just have the skills on a project level.
00:30:55And frankly, it's tough to say you need GSD
00:30:58unless you're just doing something crazy
00:31:00and you just like having your handheld
00:31:02through every single phase.
00:31:03So that's all I got.
00:31:06As always, let me know in the comments what you thought.
00:31:09We'd love to hear about how you've been using superpowers
00:31:11in GSD and when I inevitably messed up in their application.
00:31:15If you want to get your hands on the cloud code masterclass,
00:31:18make sure to check it out.
00:31:19Link is in my bio, my pinned comment.
00:31:23And besides that, I will see you guys around.