If you add an AGENTS.md, the AI agent will work more efficiently, and there will be far fewer problems like the ones you’re facing. You can include sections such as Security, coding style guidelines, writing unit tests, etc.
One improvement is to start using an AGENTS file. There are many. Here's the repo that I personally use thanks to Pontus Abrahamsson and using TypeScript:
Everyone suggesting maintaining an agent.md file haven’t met the majority of their coworkers who refuse to document anything or read documentation. Perhaps train a model that can generate these agent files for them?
The worst is when I have to baby-sit someone else’s AI. It’s so frustrating to get tagged to review a PR, open it up, and find 400 lines of obviously incorrect slop. Some try to excuse by marking the PR [vibe] but like what the hell, at least review your own goddamn ai code before asking me to look at it. Usually I want to insta reject just for the disrespect for my time.
In particular, under v0.1.0 see `decode-branch.md` prompt and it's associated generated diff which implements memoization for backtracking while performing decoding.
It's a tight PR that fits the existing codebase and works well, you just need a motivating example you can reproduce which can help me you quickly determine if the proposed solution is working. I usually generate 2-3 solutions initially and then filter them quickly based on a test case. And as you can see from the prompt, it's far from well formatted or comprehensive, just "slap dash" listing of potentially relevant information similar to what would be discussed at an informal whiteboard session.
An advertisement, where the protagonists weigh the pros and cons and then come down on the side of "paying the innovation tax".
Fastly profits from"AI" just like Cloudflare (or should we say "Claudeflare").
This selection of developers does seem representative at all. The new strategy is to acknowledge "AI" weaknesses but still adamantly claim that it is inevitable.
Funny how the article starts with someone using AI — to develop more AI stuff.
This reminds me of web3, where almost all projects were just web3 infrastructure or services, to the point that the purpose of most start-ups was completely inscrutable to outsiders.
I have very few issues with Claude. If I just tell it what the goal is, it will make some sensible suggestions, and I can tell it to start coding towards it. It rarely messes up, and when it does I catch it in the act.
You don't necessarily want to completely tune out while you're using the AI. You want to know what it's up to, but you don't need to be at your highest level of attention to do it. This is what makes it satisfying for me, because often it eats up several minutes to hunt down trivial bugs. Normally when you have some small thing like that, you have to really concentrate to find it, and it's frustrating.
When the AI is on a multi-file edit that you understand, that's when you can tune out a bit. You know that it is implementing some edit across several instances of the same interface, so you can be confident that in a few minutes everything will build and you will get a notification.
It's as if I can suddenly make all the architecture level edits without paying the cost in time that I had previously.
Where does this vibe term come from. There is no fucking vibe here. Just ask question to AI service and then check the results. Saves ton of time but one must be vigilant and be able spot bullshit. Often the solution is correct but code is very inefficient. Luckily in many cases AI can correct based on subsequent critique / input.
As someone who spends his non work hours convincing a half baked quasi person to not do dumb things (a two year old), I have zero interest in convincing a half baked quasi person to not do dumb things during work hours (most coding agents).
I’ve had good results with Claude, it just takes too long. I also don’t think I can context switch fast enough to do something else while it’s churning away.
Kind of wild watching engineers, technologists, etc clutch their pearls
AI makes mistakes - so do people - I’ve been paid many a time to go clean up the non-AI generated code humans left behind. I’ve spent countless hours troubleshooting dumb bugs generated by humans
AI brings its own set of problems but I think some people just don’t want to hear what a net benefit it is
Post after post lamenting that no machine will ever replace the human touch is so old - people have been saying that about new technology since the beginning of time
I say embrace it - great to talk about its problems objectively and how to avoid common issues, but it’s tiresome to hear all the reasons why it’s crap all the time
I would instead love articles (you do see them here sometimes) that go over how people coded complex solutions to problems using AI and the challenges they faced along the way
Knowing where the weak points are or where it may be prone to error
If you don’t embrace it, pretty soon kids coming out of college that grew up with it that contrary to popular DO understand fundamentals are going to be running circles around the people who haven’t yet figured out how to get value out of it - while you’re out there saying it’s crap and only idiots use it, these kids are going to be moving mountains - I can’t wait to see the cool stuff people build - I don’t see the future as bleak
How do the colleagues of people "vibe-coding" feel about that?
Does it end up like having colleagues who are aren't doing or understanding or learning from their own work, and are working like they offshored their job to an overnight team of juniors, and then just try to patch up the poor quality, before doing a pull request and calling their sprint done?
Or is it more like competent mechanical grunt work (e.g., "make a customer contact app with a Web form with these fields, which adds a row to the database"), that was always grunt work, and it's pretty hard to mess up, and nothing that normally the person you assigned it to would understand further anyway by doing it themself?
> working like they offshored their job to an overnight team of juniors
Reviewing a co-worker of 13 years now gives me the exact same unpleasant feeling as opening an MR from a junior where I know it's going to be garbage and I'm tired of struggling to let them down easy.
As an experienced dev who’s gotten his feet wet a little with AI, I feel like , and does anyone else feel this way, that I spend more time telling AI what to do than it would spend actually writing this all out myself?
I for one am sick and tired of hearing opinions about AI coding from people selling tools and "solutions" using AI. It's as if the entirety of tech media is just one massive ad.
I know that it's always been this way to some degree, but this is getting out of hand.
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[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 52.1 ms ] threadhttps://github.com/pontusab/directories
If you prefer AGENTS.md files using markdown, I've extracted them into my own repo:
https://github.com/SixArm/ai-agents-tips
I save every prompt and associated ai-generated diff in a markdown file for a steganography package I'm working on.
Check out this document: https://github.com/sutt/innocuous/blob/master/docs/dev-summa...
In particular, under v0.1.0 see `decode-branch.md` prompt and it's associated generated diff which implements memoization for backtracking while performing decoding.
It's a tight PR that fits the existing codebase and works well, you just need a motivating example you can reproduce which can help me you quickly determine if the proposed solution is working. I usually generate 2-3 solutions initially and then filter them quickly based on a test case. And as you can see from the prompt, it's far from well formatted or comprehensive, just "slap dash" listing of potentially relevant information similar to what would be discussed at an informal whiteboard session.
Fastly profits from"AI" just like Cloudflare (or should we say "Claudeflare").
This selection of developers does seem representative at all. The new strategy is to acknowledge "AI" weaknesses but still adamantly claim that it is inevitable.
This reminds me of web3, where almost all projects were just web3 infrastructure or services, to the point that the purpose of most start-ups was completely inscrutable to outsiders.
I'm having lots more hope for AI though.
You don't necessarily want to completely tune out while you're using the AI. You want to know what it's up to, but you don't need to be at your highest level of attention to do it. This is what makes it satisfying for me, because often it eats up several minutes to hunt down trivial bugs. Normally when you have some small thing like that, you have to really concentrate to find it, and it's frustrating.
When the AI is on a multi-file edit that you understand, that's when you can tune out a bit. You know that it is implementing some edit across several instances of the same interface, so you can be confident that in a few minutes everything will build and you will get a notification.
It's as if I can suddenly make all the architecture level edits without paying the cost in time that I had previously.
1. Replace junior developers with AI, reducing costs today.
2. Wish and hope that senior developers never retire in the future.
3. ?
The Software Engineers Paid to Fix Vibe Coded Messes
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45235458
AI can be a helpful assistant but they are nowhere near ready for letting loose when the results matter.
I’ve had good results with Claude, it just takes too long. I also don’t think I can context switch fast enough to do something else while it’s churning away.
Kind of wild watching engineers, technologists, etc clutch their pearls
AI makes mistakes - so do people - I’ve been paid many a time to go clean up the non-AI generated code humans left behind. I’ve spent countless hours troubleshooting dumb bugs generated by humans
AI brings its own set of problems but I think some people just don’t want to hear what a net benefit it is
Post after post lamenting that no machine will ever replace the human touch is so old - people have been saying that about new technology since the beginning of time
I say embrace it - great to talk about its problems objectively and how to avoid common issues, but it’s tiresome to hear all the reasons why it’s crap all the time
I would instead love articles (you do see them here sometimes) that go over how people coded complex solutions to problems using AI and the challenges they faced along the way
Knowing where the weak points are or where it may be prone to error
If you don’t embrace it, pretty soon kids coming out of college that grew up with it that contrary to popular DO understand fundamentals are going to be running circles around the people who haven’t yet figured out how to get value out of it - while you’re out there saying it’s crap and only idiots use it, these kids are going to be moving mountains - I can’t wait to see the cool stuff people build - I don’t see the future as bleak
AI just makes ambition and competition go up.
Here I put ClaudeCode in a while loop and clone itself: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/s/TY3SNp7eI9
After a week it was ready, you just need a good prompt.
People who say it cannot create anything beyond simple things are wrong. In my experience you can create anything provided your plan is good.
Does it end up like having colleagues who are aren't doing or understanding or learning from their own work, and are working like they offshored their job to an overnight team of juniors, and then just try to patch up the poor quality, before doing a pull request and calling their sprint done?
Or is it more like competent mechanical grunt work (e.g., "make a customer contact app with a Web form with these fields, which adds a row to the database"), that was always grunt work, and it's pretty hard to mess up, and nothing that normally the person you assigned it to would understand further anyway by doing it themself?
Reviewing a co-worker of 13 years now gives me the exact same unpleasant feeling as opening an MR from a junior where I know it's going to be garbage and I'm tired of struggling to let them down easy.
It's just really hard to convert requirements to English when there are a bunch of land mines in there that you know how to avoid.
I know that it's always been this way to some degree, but this is getting out of hand.