After 3 weeks of coding with Codex cli & Claude Code in a Laravel project, I learned that following some practices yields much better results, specially when you’re dealing with a code base that has grown beyond few files. Regardless of the tool, here are five practical strategies that consistently helped me stay productive, avoid frustration, and maintain code quality. 1. Use a Context File Both models support a config file that you can use to guid the model. I preferred to use a separate Markdown file where I outlined the codebase structure: e.g., where the wizard logic lives, which folders hold the models, naming conventions, etc. ...