Claude Clue #8: Train Your Model on Today, Not Yesterday

Claude's training data has a cutoff date, which means the libraries it "remembers" are frozen in time—security flaws and all. The code it writes might run perfectly, pass your tests, and look totally fine. But under the hood, you're building on patterns that were current two years ago, with dependencies that have since been deprecated or patched. You won't catch it because nothing breaks. You'll catch it later, when you try to upgrade or integrate, and suddenly everything falls apart.

The fix fits right into the Think phase of my process: before you start building, have Claude research the current version of whatever libraries or frameworks you're using. Tell it to focus on that specific version. Lock it in. When I'm starting a new project, I'll ask Claude to look up the latest stable release and any breaking changes before we write a single line of code. That small upfront effort prevents the kind of failures that only surface when rubber meets the road—and keeps Dependabot from immediately opening a dozen PRs the moment you push.

HT: Tim Rawson

Claude wrote the words. I wrote the check. (Just kidding, API costs are reasonable.)