[jlcummings]

Being effective with llm agents requires not just the ability to code or to appreciate nuance with libraries or business rules but to have the ability and proclivity of pedantry. Dad-splain everything always.

And to have boundless contextual awareness… dig a rabbit hole, but beware that you are in your own hole. At this point you can escape the hole but you have to be purposefully aware of what guardrails and ladders you give the agent to evoke action.

The better, more explicit guardrails you provide the more likely the agent is able to do what is expected and honor the scope and context you establish. If you tell it to use silverware to eat, be assured it doesn’t mean to use it appropriately or idiomatically and it will try eating soup with a fork.

Lastly don’t be afraid of commits and checkpoints, or to reject/rollback proposed changes and restate or reset the context. The agent might be the leading actor, but you are the director. When a scene doesn’t play out, try it again after clarification or changing camera perspective or lighting or lines, or cut/replace the scene entirely.

[cmsj]

I find that level of pedantry and hand-holding, to be extremely tedious and I frequently find myself just thinking fuck it, I'll write it myself and get what I want the first time.

[skydhash]

This. That’s why every programmer strive for a good architecture and write tests. When you have that and all your bug fixes and feature request are only a small amount of lines, that is pure bliss. Even if it requires hours of reading and designing. Anything is better than dumping lot of lines.

[dingi]

Why would anyone bother at this point though? Tedious handholding and extra effort for code reviews. Just write the damn thing yourself.

[etherealG]

Because once you figure out the correct way to handhold, you can automate it and the tediousness goes away.

It’s only tedious once per codebase or task, then you find the less tedious recipe and you’re done.

You can even get others to do the tedious part at their layer of abstraction so that you don’t have to anymore. Same as compilers, cpu design, or any other pet of the stack lower than the one you’re using.