Pair Programming with Claude Code: Brilliant in Parts, Unreliable in Others

Claude Code promises the dream of frictionless pair-programming—and in many moments, it delivers exactly that. This week I put it to the test across real-world tasks in a production codebase, from framework upgrades to UI migrations and automated QA planning. What I discovered was an assistant that can feel astonishingly capable and even delightful when working within clear boundaries, yet surprisingly unreliable when pushed into more complex or ambiguous transformations. In other words: brilliant in parts, unpredictable in others.