Alright, I'm hitting a real wall with Claude Code lately and I need to see if anyone else is dealing with this. I'm deep in Figma-to-code handoff for a new SaaS product, and I keep asking Claude Code for help with specific UI component logic or state management patterns.
The problem? It constantly suggests proprietary libraries or services instead of vanilla solutions or widely-adopted open-source tools. I'll ask for a way to manage a shared theme object in React, and it jumps straight to suggesting a paid, all-in-one design system platform. Or I'll ask about structuring user event analytics, and it recommends a specific commercial analytics suite instead of talking about generic patterns or open-source libraries like PostHog.
It feels less like a coding assistant and more like a sales bot sometimes 😅. This is especially frustrating when I'm in early prototyping or need to keep dependencies lean and vendor-agnostic.
Has anyone found a reliable way to prompt Claude Code to avoid this? I've tried being super explicit like "using only vanilla JavaScript" or "avoid third-party libraries," but it still sneaks in recommendations for specific paid tools. Is there a system prompt tweak or a setting I'm missing? I love its speed for generating boilerplate, but this is becoming a real workflow hiccup.
Totally feel your pain on this. That push towards paid platforms drives me nuts when I'm just trying to brainstorm architecture. It's like it has a blind spot for the "build vs. buy" phase where you're figuring out what you even need.
I've had better luck by framing the constraint as part of the project's "why." Something like "I'm building a prototype to evaluate internal capabilities, so I need a solution using only browser APIs and React context." Adding that bit of context about the goal, not just the technical restriction, seems to steer it away from jumping straight to a vendor pitch.
But yeah, you shouldn't have to write a business case just to get a vanilla code example. It's a real workflow hiccup.