[vFunct]

Yah Claude tends to output 1200+ line architectural specification documents while Gemini tends to output ~600 line. (I just had to write 100+ architectural spec documents for 100+ different apps)

Not sure why Claude is more thorough and complete than the other models, but it's my go-to model for large projects.

The OpenAI model outputs are always the smallest - 500 lines or so. Not very good at larger projects, but perfectly fine for small fixes.

[chermi]

I'd interested to hear more about your workflow. I use Gemini for discussing the codebase, making ADR entries based on discussion, ticket generation, documenting the code like module descriptions and use cases+examples, and coming up with detailed plans for implementation that cursor with sonnet can implement. Do you have any particular formats, guidelines or prompts? I don't love my workflow. I try to keep everything in notion but it's becoming a pain. I'm pretty new to documentation and proper planning, but I feel like it's more important now to get the best use out of the llms. Any tips appreciated!

[vFunct]

For a large project, the real human trick for you to do is to figure out how to partition it down to separate apps, so that individual LLMs can work on them separately, as if they were their own employees in separate departments.

You then ask LLMs to first write features for the individual apps (in Markdown), giving it some early competitive guidelines.

You then tell LLMs to read that features document, and then write an architectural specification document. Tell it to maybe add example data structures, algorithms, or user interface layouts. All in Markdown.

You then feed these two documents to individual LLMs to write the rest of the code, usually starting with the data models first, then the algorithms, then the user interface.

Again, the trick is to partition your project to individual apps. Also an app isn't the full app. It might just be a data schema, a single GUI window, a marketing plan, etc.

The other hard part is to integrate the apps back together at the top level if they interact with each other...

[chermi]

Awesome, thanks! It's interesting how the most effective LLM use for coding kind of enforces good design principles. It feels like good architects/designers are going to be more important than ever.

Edit- Except maybe TDD? Which kind of makes me wonder if TDD was a good paradigm to begin with. I'm not sure, but I'm picturing an LLM writing pretty shitty/hacky code if its goal is just passing tests. But I've never really tried TDD either before or after LLM so I should probably shut up.

[rogerrogerr]

> I just had to write 100+ architectural spec documents for 100+ different apps

… whaaaaat?

[vFunct]

Huge project..

[skybrian]

Big design up front is back? But I guess it's a lot easier now, so why not?

[Bjartr]

What's your prompt look like for creating spec documents?

[jonny_eh]

Who's reading these docs?

[tasuki]

Another LLM, which distills it back into a couple of sentences for human consumption.