[dpark]

I’ve thought of going down the TDD model for LLMs as a way of providing constraints on their behavior. I would think that “vertical slice” TDD would encourage the LLM to start tailoring the tests to the implementation rather than establishing the invariants up front, though. I was considering “horizontal” TDD to force the agent to implement constraints before coding to them.

[evanklem2004]

yeah went back and forth on exactly this trade-off, you're right that vertical can produce tests tailored to the impl. horizontal forces invariants up front but the failure mode flips: you're tailoring tests to the architecture you imagined before any feedback from working code. so it's invariants-vs-behaviors, both have a tailoring failure mode just on different axes. compromise i landed on: vertical + an explicit anti-tailoring grill check at each cycle. definitely gonna tweak with more as i keep refining.

[dpark]

What if you don’t ask for code yet. Prompt only for tests with maybe a minimal interface context that tests can code against?