5 ms·

All of this might as well be greek to me. I use ChatGPT and copy paste code snippets. Which was bleeding edge a year or two ago, and now it feels like banging r

All of this might as well be greek to me. I use ChatGPT and copy paste code snippets. Which was bleeding edge a year or two ago, and now it feels like banging rocks together when reading these types of articles. I never had any luck integrating agents, MCP, using tools etc. Like if I'm not ready to jump on some AI-spiced up special IDE, am I then going to just be left banging rocks together? It feels like some of these AI agent companies just decided "Ok we can't adopt this into the old IDE's so we'll build a new special IDE"?_Or did I just use the wrong tools (I use Rider and VS, and I have only tried Copilot so far, but feel the "agent mode" of Copilot in those IDE's is basically useless).

hahahahhaah 9mo ago
I feel like just use claude code. That is it. Use it you get the feel for it. Everyone is over complicating. It is like learning to code itself. You need flight hours.
- cobolexpert 9mo ago
  This is something that continues to surprise me. LLMs are extremely flexible and already come prepackaged with a lot of "knowledge", you don't need to dump hundreds of lines of text to explain to it what good software development practices are. I suspect these frameworks/patterns just fill up the context with unecessary junk.
  - vidarh 9mo ago
    You get to 80% there (numbers pulled out of the air) by just telling it to do things. You do need more to get from 80% there to 90%+ there. How much more depends on what you're trying to do and in what language (e.g. "favourite" pet peeve: Claude occasionally likes to use instance_variable_get() in Ruby instead of adding accessors; it's a massive code smell), but there are some generic things, such as giving it instructions on keeping notes and giving them subagents to farm out repetitive tasks to prevent the individual task completion from filling up the context for tasks that are truly independent (in which case, for Claude Code at least, you can also tell it to do multiple in parallel) But, indeed, just starting Claude Code (or Codex; I prefer Claude but it's a "personality thing" - try tools until you click with one) and telling it to do something is the most important step up from a chat window.
    - cobolexpert 9mo ago
      I agree about the small tweaks like the Ruby accessor thing, I also have some small notes like that myself, to nudge the agent in the right direction.
  - epolanski 9mo ago
    > I suspect these frameworks/patterns just fill up the context with unecessary junk. That's exactly the point. Agents have their own context. Thus, you try to leverage them by combining ad-hoc instructions for repetitive tasks (such as reviewing code or running a test checklist) and not polluting your conversation/context.
    - cobolexpert 9mo ago
      Ah do you mean sub-agents? I do understand that if I summon a sub-agent and give it e.g. code reviewing instructions, it will not fill up the context of the main conversation. But my point is that giving the sub-agent the instruction "review this code as if you were a staff engineer" (literally those words) should cover most use cases (but I can't prove this, unfortunately).
      - vidarh 9mo ago
        I do think you're right that you should be cautious about writing too convoluted sub-agents. I'd rather use more of them that are brief and specialized, than try to over-correct on having a single agent try to "remember" too many rules. Not really because the description itself will eat too much context, but because having the sub-agent work for too long will accumulate too much context and dilute your initial instructions anyway.
  - Macha 9mo ago
    If I don't instruct it to in some way, the agent will not write tests, will not conform with the linter standard, will not correctly figure out the command to run a subset of tests, etc.
  - raesene9 9mo ago
    I think avoiding filling context up with too much pattern information, is partially where agent skills are coming from, with the idea there being that each skill has a set of triggers, and the main body of the skill is only loaded into context, if that trigger is hit. You could still overload with too many skills but it helps at least.
  - TeMPOraL 9mo ago
    There's no such thing as universal "good software development practices". There's only lots of opinions. Some are more popular, some less; some are language, domain or company-specific (or even tool-specific - see various webshit frameworks whose idiosyncrasies spill over to significantly alter coding style), and many exist only as historical baggage - but they all largely conflict with each other. And LLMs have seen them all. Consider as an example, that "Clean Code" used to be gospel, now it's mostly considered a book of antipatterns, and many developers prefer to follow Ousterhout instead of Uncle Bob. LLMs "read" both Clean Code and A Philosophy of Software Design, but without prompting they won't know which way you prefer things, so they'll synthesize something more-less in between these two near-complete opposites, mostly depending on the language they're writing code in. The way I think about it is: "You are a staff software engineer with 15 years of experience in <tech stack used in the project>" is doing 80% of the job, by pulling in specific regions in the latent space associated with good software engineering. But the more particular you are about style, or the more your project deviates from what's the most popular practice across any dimension (whether code style or folder naming scheme or whatnot), the more you need to describe those deviations in your prompt - otherwise you'll be fighting the model. And then, it's helpful to describe any project-specific knowledge such as which tools you're using (VCS, testing framework, etc.), where the files are located, etc. so the model doesn't have to waste tokens discovering it on its own. Prompts are about latent space management. You need to strengthen associations you want, and suppress the ones you don't. It can get wordy at times, for the same reason explaining some complex thought to another person often takes a lot of words. First sentence may do 90% of the job, but the remaining 20 sentences are needed to narrow down on a specific idea.
    - cobolexpert 9mo ago
      Maybe my initial message was overly harsh, I mostly agree with your points here. I think maybe the point of disagreement is exactly _how much_ extra prompt is necessary to approach 100% of the job, but this is quite hard to measure (obviously). Your point about latent space management is a good mental model to have IMO.
- _zoltan_ 9mo ago
  It's not that simple. That's how I started as well but now I have hooked up Gemini and GPT 5.2 to review code and plans and then to do consensus on design questions. And then there's Ralph with cross LLM consensus in a loop. It's great.
- alkonaut 9mo ago
  I'm stuck with the Copilot tools. Again, I don't think this is a problem with the models but with the tooling. I can't switch to claude code (for work, that is) and while I don't mind using more command line tools I don't want to run multiple IDE's. But it's good to hear that it's not me being completely dumb, it's Copilot Agent Mode tooling that is?
rustyhancock 9mo ago
I don't think so it seems the aspiration of these tools is it'll be agents all the way down. A high level task is given and outpops a working solution. A) If you can't program and you're just happy to have something working you're safe. B) If you're an experienced programmer and can specify the structure of the solution you're safe. In between, is where it seems people will struggle. How do you get from A to B.
dude250711 9mo ago
The idea is to produce such articles, not read them. Do not even read them as the agent is spitting them out - simply feed straight into another agent to verify.
- 63stack 9mo ago
  Present it at the next team/management meeting to seem in the loop and hope nobody asks any questions
  - chrz 9mo ago
    No questions. It will be pasted into their AI tool. And things will be great. For few weeks at least until something break a nobody will know what
embedding-shape 9mo ago
> I never had any luck integrating agents What exactly do you mean with "integrating agents" and what did you try? The simplest (and what I do) is not "integrating them" anywhere, but just replace the "copy-paste code + write prompt + copy output to code" with "write prompt > agent reads code > agent changes code > I review and accept/reject". Not really "integration" as much as just a workflow change.
- alkonaut 9mo ago
  I installed the copilot extension in my IDE, and switched on Agent mode. I don't really get how the workflow is supposed to work, but I think it's mostly due to how the tool is made. It has like some sort of "change stack" similar to git commits/staging but which keeps conflicting with anything I manually edit. Perhaps it's just this particular implementation (Copilot integration in VS) which is bad, and others are better? I have extreme trouble trying to feed it context, handling suggested AI changes without completely corrupting the code for even small changes.
  - songodongo 9mo ago
    Make sure you’re clicking “Keep” to “approve” the changes. It’s annoying but I don’t think there is a way around having to do that. Then if you manually edit something, you can mention it in your next chat message, e.g., “I made a few changes to <file>. <Next instruction>”
  - embedding-shape 9mo ago
    Hm, yeah maybe. I've tried Cursor once, but the entire experience was so horrible, and it was really hard to know what's going on. The workflow I have right now, is something like what I put before, and I do it with Codex and Claude Code, both work the same. Maybe try out one of those, if you're comfortable with the terminal? It basically opens up a terminal UI, can read current files, you enter a prompt, wait, then can review the results with git or whatever VCS you use. But I'm also never "vibe-coding", I'm reviewing every single line, and mercilessly ask the agent to refactor whenever the code isn't up to my standards. Also restart the agent after each prompt finished, as they get really dumb as soon as context is used more than 20% of their "max".
CurleighBraces 9mo ago
Yeah if you've not used codex/agent tooling yet it's a paradigm shift in the way of working, and once you get it it's very very difficult to go back to the copy-pasta technique. There's obviously a whole heap of hype to cut through here, but there is real value to be had. For example yesterday I had a bug where my embedded device was hard crashing when I called reset. We narrowed it down to the tool we used to flash the code. I downloaded the repository, jumped into codex, explained the symptoms and it found and fixed the bug in less than ten minutes. There is absolutely no way I'd of been able to achieve that speed of resolution myself.
- Bewelge 9mo ago
  - We narrowed it down to the tool we used to flash the code. - I downloaded the repository, jumped into codex, explained the symptoms and it found and fixed the bug in less than ten minutes. Change the second step to: - I downloaded the repository, explained the symptoms, copied the relevant files into Claude Web and 10 minutes later it had provided me with the solution to the bug. Now I definitely see the ergonomic improvement of Claude running directly in your directory, saving you copy/paste twice. But in my experience the hard parts are explaining the symptoms and deciding what goes into the context. And let's face it, in both scenarios you fixed a bug in 10-15 minutes which might have taken you a whole hour/day/week before. It's safe to say that LLMs are an incredible technological advancement. But the discussion about tooling feels like vim vs emacs vs IDEs. Maybe you save a few minutes with one tool over the other, but that saving is often blown out of proportion. The speedup I gain from LLMs (on some tasks) is incredible. But it's certainly not due to the interface I use them in. Also I do believe LLM/agent integrations in your IDE are the obvious future. But the current implementations still add enough friction that I don't use them as daily drivers.
  - CurleighBraces 9mo ago
    I agree with your statement and perhaps my example is bad/too specific in this case. Once I started working this way however, I found myself starting to adapt to it. It's not unusual now to find myself with at least a couple of simultaneous coding sessions, which I couldn't see myself doing with the friction that using Claude Web/Codex web provides. I also entirely agree that there's going to be a lot of innovation here. IDEs imo will change to become increasingly focused on reading/reviewing code rather than writing, and in fact might look entirely different.
tmountain 9mo ago
I used to do it the way you were doing it. A friend went to a hackathon and everyone was using Cursor and insisted that I try it. It lets you set project level "rules" that are basically prompts for how you want things done. It has access to your entire repo. You tell the agent what you want to do, and it does it, and allows you to review it. It's that simple; although, you can take it much further if you want or need to. For me, this is a massive leap forward on its own. I'm still getting up to speed with reproducible prompt patterns like TFA mentions, but it's okay to work incrementally towards better results.
prettygood 9mo ago
I'm so happy someone else says this, because I'm doing exactly the same. I tried to use agent mode in vs code and the output was still bad. You read simple things like: "We use it to write tests". I gave it a very simple repository, said to write tests, and the result wasn't usable at all. Really wonder if I'm doing it wrong.
- embedding-shape 9mo ago
  You didn't actually just say "write tests" though right? What was the actual prompt you used? I feel like that matters more than the tooling at this point. I can't really understand letting LLMs decide what to test or not, they seem to completely miss the boat when it comes to testing. Half of them are useless because they duplicate what they test, and the other half doesn't test what they should be testing. So many shortcuts, and LLMs require A LOT of hand-holding when writing tests, more so than other code I'd wager.
  - Balinares 9mo ago
    There are a lot of comments on HN and other places breathlessly gushing about agents totally doing everything end to end, so I couldn't blame someone new to this space for naively assuming that agents would be able to handle a well-bounded problem such as test coverage reasonably well.
    - embedding-shape 9mo ago
      > naively assuming that agents would be able to handle a well-bounded problem such as test coverage reasonably well. We haven't figured out a way for humans to do that well :P I still see people arguing about "80% test coverage is obviously better than 70%" and similar dumb sentiments that completely misses the point. But agree with the first part, LLMs are massively oversold and it's hard to blame users for believing them. Tempered expectations as always win.
  - prettygood 9mo ago
    No, that was an exaggeration. The prompt was decent. I explained the point of the repository, that I wanted full coverage with tests, that it could keep going until it worked. Maybe that was still not enough. With how others talk about it, I must be missing something.
franze 9mo ago
I am on the other side, I have given the complete control of my computer to Claude Code - Yolo Mode. Sudo. It just works. My servers run the same. I SSH into Claude Code there and let them do whatever work they need to do. So my 2 cents. Use Claude Code. In Yolo mode. Use it. Learn with it. Whenever I post something like this I get a lot of downvots. But well ... end of 2026 we will not use computer the way we use them now. Claude Code Feb 2025 was the first step, now Jan 2026 CoWork (Claude Code for everyone else) is here. It is just a much much more powerful way to use computers.
- jangxx 9mo ago
  Don't say "we" when talking about yourself.
  - franze 9mo ago
    I already do. And yes, it is a hypothesis about the future. Claude Code was just a first step. It will happen to the rest of computer use as well.
- darkwater 9mo ago
  Claude Code and agents are the hot new hammer, and they are cool, I use CC and like it for many things, but currently they suffer from the "hot new hammer" hype so people tend to think everything is a nail the LLM can handle. But you still need a screwdriver for screws, even if you can hammer them in.
  - TeMPOraL 9mo ago
    That "hot new hammer" hype is a good thing given general enough tool, and LLMs very much are that. We did the same with smartphones, the Internet, personal computers, and even electricity. Some 150 years ago, humanity collectively decided to try and redo everything but with electricity. In some cases, it was a clear success - e.g. lights. It enabled further progress - see e.g. computers, MRI machines, etc. In other cases, it was a failure - see e.g. cars, which still rely on ICEs despite electric cars being first, because until recently batteries just were not there. And then, in many cases the adoption was partial - see e.g. power tools, which are usually electrical, but in professional / industrial use, there's lots of hydraulic/pressurized air powered variants. All the above took people trying things out, "throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks". We're at this stage with LLMs now.
photios 9mo ago
Copilot's agent mode is a disaster. Use better tools: try Claude Code or OpenCode (my favorite). It's a new ecosystem with its own (atrocious!) jargon that you need to learn. The good news is that it's not hard to do so. It's not as complex or revolutionary as everyone makes it look like. Everything boils down to techniques and frameworks of collecting context/prompt before handing it over to the model.
- darkwater 9mo ago
  Yep, basically this. In the end it helps having the mental model that (almost) everything related to agents is just a way to send the upstream LLM a better and more specific context for the task you need to solve at that specific time. i.e Claude Code "skills" are simply a markdown file in a subdirectory with a specific name that translates to a `/SKILL_NAME` command in Claude and a prompt that is injected each time that skill is mentioned or Claude thinks it needs to use, so it doesn't forget the specific way you want to handle that specific task.
  - theshrike79 9mo ago
    Skills can (and IMO should) also contain scripts custom made for that skill. Like a code review skill would have scripts that read the actual code.
    - darkwater 9mo ago
      Thanks for the correction, TIL.
- alkonaut 9mo ago
  Sadly we have some partnership meaning it's Copilot or nothing.
  - JeremyNT 9mo ago
    If you can use the Copilot CLI, it's highly likely you can use OpenCode with the same API key. It's worth doing a little research. The CLI tool matters. If you're not using opencode/claude you're missing out. But the latest OpenAI models are really quite good.
jonathanstrange 9mo ago
I'm doing the same. My reason is not the IDE, I just can't let AI agent software onto my machine. I have no trust at all in it and the companies who make this software. I neither trust them in terms of file integrity nor for keeping secrets secret, and I do have to keep secrets like API keys on my file system. Am I right in assuming that the people who use AI agent software use them in confined environments like VMs with tight version control? Then it makes sense but the setup is not worth the hassle for me.
breppp 9mo ago
I also sympathize with that approach, and found it sometimes better than agents. I believe some of the agentic IDEs are missing a "contained mode". Let me select lines in my code which you are allowed to edit in this prompt and nothing else, for these "add a function that does x" without starting to run amok
- alkonaut 9mo ago
  Yes. And some way of using an instructions file. Because interacting with an agent in a tiny plugin window without use of "agents.md" or some sort of persistent prompt you can adjust retry etc is horrible. Now it's "please add one unit test for Foobar()" and it goes away and thinks for 2 minues and does nothing then I point it to where the FooBar() which it didn't find and then adds a test method then I change the name to one I like better but now the AI change wasn't "accepted"(?) so the thing is borked... I think the UX for agents is important and ...this can't be it.
ramraj07 9mo ago
I recently pasted an error I found into claude code and asked who broke this. It found the commit and also found that someone else had fixed it in their branch. You should use claude code.
- bojan 9mo ago
  There's no reason this should not be possible in other IDEs, except for the vendor lock-in.
- ctmnt 9mo ago
  You don’t even need to paste. Connect it to your IDE (which should be as easy as installing the Claude plugin in your IDE and typing `ide` in `code`) and it’ll automatically pull in whatever you have selected.
- JeremyNT 9mo ago
  If your org has a relationship with MS/OpenAI (many do!) you can also use OpenCode with GPT-5.2 for some pretty impressive results. Once you see what is currently possible with this technique you will understand that programming as a field is doomed, or at the very least it's becoming something almost unrecognizable.
wiseowise 9mo ago
You just didn't drink enough cool-aid and have intact brain.
kaycey2022 9mo ago
I’m not as behind as that. But i cant figure out this loop thing. We have engineers here saying they are reviewing 100k lines of code a day, slinging 10 agents simultaneously. I just cannot figure out how that is humanly possible. Agentic coding has come a long way though. What you are describing sounds like a trust issue more than a skill issue. Some git scumming should fix that. Maybe what I’m going through is also a trust issue.

hahahahhaah 9mo ago

I feel like just use claude code. That is it. Use it you get the feel for it. Everyone is over complicating. It is like learning to code itself. You need flight hours.

cobolexpert 9mo ago
This is something that continues to surprise me. LLMs are extremely flexible and already come prepackaged with a lot of "knowledge", you don't need to dump hundreds of lines of text to explain to it what good software development practices are. I suspect these frameworks/patterns just fill up the context with unecessary junk.
- vidarh 9mo ago
  You get to 80% there (numbers pulled out of the air) by just telling it to do things. You do need more to get from 80% there to 90%+ there. How much more depends on what you're trying to do and in what language (e.g. "favourite" pet peeve: Claude occasionally likes to use instance_variable_get() in Ruby instead of adding accessors; it's a massive code smell), but there are some generic things, such as giving it instructions on keeping notes and giving them subagents to farm out repetitive tasks to prevent the individual task completion from filling up the context for tasks that are truly independent (in which case, for Claude Code at least, you can also tell it to do multiple in parallel) But, indeed, just starting Claude Code (or Codex; I prefer Claude but it's a "personality thing" - try tools until you click with one) and telling it to do something is the most important step up from a chat window.
  - cobolexpert 9mo ago
    I agree about the small tweaks like the Ruby accessor thing, I also have some small notes like that myself, to nudge the agent in the right direction.
- epolanski 9mo ago
  > I suspect these frameworks/patterns just fill up the context with unecessary junk. That's exactly the point. Agents have their own context. Thus, you try to leverage them by combining ad-hoc instructions for repetitive tasks (such as reviewing code or running a test checklist) and not polluting your conversation/context.
  - cobolexpert 9mo ago
    Ah do you mean sub-agents? I do understand that if I summon a sub-agent and give it e.g. code reviewing instructions, it will not fill up the context of the main conversation. But my point is that giving the sub-agent the instruction "review this code as if you were a staff engineer" (literally those words) should cover most use cases (but I can't prove this, unfortunately).
    - vidarh 9mo ago
      I do think you're right that you should be cautious about writing too convoluted sub-agents. I'd rather use more of them that are brief and specialized, than try to over-correct on having a single agent try to "remember" too many rules. Not really because the description itself will eat too much context, but because having the sub-agent work for too long will accumulate too much context and dilute your initial instructions anyway.
- Macha 9mo ago
  If I don't instruct it to in some way, the agent will not write tests, will not conform with the linter standard, will not correctly figure out the command to run a subset of tests, etc.
- raesene9 9mo ago
  I think avoiding filling context up with too much pattern information, is partially where agent skills are coming from, with the idea there being that each skill has a set of triggers, and the main body of the skill is only loaded into context, if that trigger is hit. You could still overload with too many skills but it helps at least.
- TeMPOraL 9mo ago
  There's no such thing as universal "good software development practices". There's only lots of opinions. Some are more popular, some less; some are language, domain or company-specific (or even tool-specific - see various webshit frameworks whose idiosyncrasies spill over to significantly alter coding style), and many exist only as historical baggage - but they all largely conflict with each other. And LLMs have seen them all. Consider as an example, that "Clean Code" used to be gospel, now it's mostly considered a book of antipatterns, and many developers prefer to follow Ousterhout instead of Uncle Bob. LLMs "read" both Clean Code and A Philosophy of Software Design, but without prompting they won't know which way you prefer things, so they'll synthesize something more-less in between these two near-complete opposites, mostly depending on the language they're writing code in. The way I think about it is: "You are a staff software engineer with 15 years of experience in <tech stack used in the project>" is doing 80% of the job, by pulling in specific regions in the latent space associated with good software engineering. But the more particular you are about style, or the more your project deviates from what's the most popular practice across any dimension (whether code style or folder naming scheme or whatnot), the more you need to describe those deviations in your prompt - otherwise you'll be fighting the model. And then, it's helpful to describe any project-specific knowledge such as which tools you're using (VCS, testing framework, etc.), where the files are located, etc. so the model doesn't have to waste tokens discovering it on its own. Prompts are about latent space management. You need to strengthen associations you want, and suppress the ones you don't. It can get wordy at times, for the same reason explaining some complex thought to another person often takes a lot of words. First sentence may do 90% of the job, but the remaining 20 sentences are needed to narrow down on a specific idea.
  - cobolexpert 9mo ago
    Maybe my initial message was overly harsh, I mostly agree with your points here. I think maybe the point of disagreement is exactly _how much_ extra prompt is necessary to approach 100% of the job, but this is quite hard to measure (obviously). Your point about latent space management is a good mental model to have IMO.
_zoltan_ 9mo ago
It's not that simple. That's how I started as well but now I have hooked up Gemini and GPT 5.2 to review code and plans and then to do consensus on design questions. And then there's Ralph with cross LLM consensus in a loop. It's great.
alkonaut 9mo ago
I'm stuck with the Copilot tools. Again, I don't think this is a problem with the models but with the tooling. I can't switch to claude code (for work, that is) and while I don't mind using more command line tools I don't want to run multiple IDE's. But it's good to hear that it's not me being completely dumb, it's Copilot Agent Mode tooling that is?

rustyhancock 9mo ago

I don't think so it seems the aspiration of these tools is it'll be agents all the way down. A high level task is given and outpops a working solution. A) If you can't program and you're just happy to have something working you're safe. B) If you're an experienced programmer and can specify the structure of the solution you're safe. In between, is where it seems people will struggle. How do you get from A to B.

dude250711 9mo ago

The idea is to produce such articles, not read them. Do not even read them as the agent is spitting them out - simply feed straight into another agent to verify.

63stack 9mo ago
Present it at the next team/management meeting to seem in the loop and hope nobody asks any questions
- chrz 9mo ago
  No questions. It will be pasted into their AI tool. And things will be great. For few weeks at least until something break a nobody will know what

embedding-shape 9mo ago

> I never had any luck integrating agents What exactly do you mean with "integrating agents" and what did you try? The simplest (and what I do) is not "integrating them" anywhere, but just replace the "copy-paste code + write prompt + copy output to code" with "write prompt > agent reads code > agent changes code > I review and accept/reject". Not really "integration" as much as just a workflow change.

alkonaut 9mo ago
I installed the copilot extension in my IDE, and switched on Agent mode. I don't really get how the workflow is supposed to work, but I think it's mostly due to how the tool is made. It has like some sort of "change stack" similar to git commits/staging but which keeps conflicting with anything I manually edit. Perhaps it's just this particular implementation (Copilot integration in VS) which is bad, and others are better? I have extreme trouble trying to feed it context, handling suggested AI changes without completely corrupting the code for even small changes.
- songodongo 9mo ago
  Make sure you’re clicking “Keep” to “approve” the changes. It’s annoying but I don’t think there is a way around having to do that. Then if you manually edit something, you can mention it in your next chat message, e.g., “I made a few changes to <file>. <Next instruction>”
- embedding-shape 9mo ago
  Hm, yeah maybe. I've tried Cursor once, but the entire experience was so horrible, and it was really hard to know what's going on. The workflow I have right now, is something like what I put before, and I do it with Codex and Claude Code, both work the same. Maybe try out one of those, if you're comfortable with the terminal? It basically opens up a terminal UI, can read current files, you enter a prompt, wait, then can review the results with git or whatever VCS you use. But I'm also never "vibe-coding", I'm reviewing every single line, and mercilessly ask the agent to refactor whenever the code isn't up to my standards. Also restart the agent after each prompt finished, as they get really dumb as soon as context is used more than 20% of their "max".

CurleighBraces 9mo ago

Yeah if you've not used codex/agent tooling yet it's a paradigm shift in the way of working, and once you get it it's very very difficult to go back to the copy-pasta technique. There's obviously a whole heap of hype to cut through here, but there is real value to be had. For example yesterday I had a bug where my embedded device was hard crashing when I called reset. We narrowed it down to the tool we used to flash the code. I downloaded the repository, jumped into codex, explained the symptoms and it found and fixed the bug in less than ten minutes. There is absolutely no way I'd of been able to achieve that speed of resolution myself.

Bewelge 9mo ago
- We narrowed it down to the tool we used to flash the code. - I downloaded the repository, jumped into codex, explained the symptoms and it found and fixed the bug in less than ten minutes. Change the second step to: - I downloaded the repository, explained the symptoms, copied the relevant files into Claude Web and 10 minutes later it had provided me with the solution to the bug. Now I definitely see the ergonomic improvement of Claude running directly in your directory, saving you copy/paste twice. But in my experience the hard parts are explaining the symptoms and deciding what goes into the context. And let's face it, in both scenarios you fixed a bug in 10-15 minutes which might have taken you a whole hour/day/week before. It's safe to say that LLMs are an incredible technological advancement. But the discussion about tooling feels like vim vs emacs vs IDEs. Maybe you save a few minutes with one tool over the other, but that saving is often blown out of proportion. The speedup I gain from LLMs (on some tasks) is incredible. But it's certainly not due to the interface I use them in. Also I do believe LLM/agent integrations in your IDE are the obvious future. But the current implementations still add enough friction that I don't use them as daily drivers.
- CurleighBraces 9mo ago
  I agree with your statement and perhaps my example is bad/too specific in this case. Once I started working this way however, I found myself starting to adapt to it. It's not unusual now to find myself with at least a couple of simultaneous coding sessions, which I couldn't see myself doing with the friction that using Claude Web/Codex web provides. I also entirely agree that there's going to be a lot of innovation here. IDEs imo will change to become increasingly focused on reading/reviewing code rather than writing, and in fact might look entirely different.

tmountain 9mo ago

I used to do it the way you were doing it. A friend went to a hackathon and everyone was using Cursor and insisted that I try it. It lets you set project level "rules" that are basically prompts for how you want things done. It has access to your entire repo. You tell the agent what you want to do, and it does it, and allows you to review it. It's that simple; although, you can take it much further if you want or need to. For me, this is a massive leap forward on its own. I'm still getting up to speed with reproducible prompt patterns like TFA mentions, but it's okay to work incrementally towards better results.

prettygood 9mo ago

I'm so happy someone else says this, because I'm doing exactly the same. I tried to use agent mode in vs code and the output was still bad. You read simple things like: "We use it to write tests". I gave it a very simple repository, said to write tests, and the result wasn't usable at all. Really wonder if I'm doing it wrong.

embedding-shape 9mo ago
You didn't actually just say "write tests" though right? What was the actual prompt you used? I feel like that matters more than the tooling at this point. I can't really understand letting LLMs decide what to test or not, they seem to completely miss the boat when it comes to testing. Half of them are useless because they duplicate what they test, and the other half doesn't test what they should be testing. So many shortcuts, and LLMs require A LOT of hand-holding when writing tests, more so than other code I'd wager.
- Balinares 9mo ago
  There are a lot of comments on HN and other places breathlessly gushing about agents totally doing everything end to end, so I couldn't blame someone new to this space for naively assuming that agents would be able to handle a well-bounded problem such as test coverage reasonably well.
  - embedding-shape 9mo ago
    > naively assuming that agents would be able to handle a well-bounded problem such as test coverage reasonably well. We haven't figured out a way for humans to do that well :P I still see people arguing about "80% test coverage is obviously better than 70%" and similar dumb sentiments that completely misses the point. But agree with the first part, LLMs are massively oversold and it's hard to blame users for believing them. Tempered expectations as always win.
- prettygood 9mo ago
  No, that was an exaggeration. The prompt was decent. I explained the point of the repository, that I wanted full coverage with tests, that it could keep going until it worked. Maybe that was still not enough. With how others talk about it, I must be missing something.

franze 9mo ago

I am on the other side, I have given the complete control of my computer to Claude Code - Yolo Mode. Sudo. It just works. My servers run the same. I SSH into Claude Code there and let them do whatever work they need to do. So my 2 cents. Use Claude Code. In Yolo mode. Use it. Learn with it. Whenever I post something like this I get a lot of downvots. But well ... end of 2026 we will not use computer the way we use them now. Claude Code Feb 2025 was the first step, now Jan 2026 CoWork (Claude Code for everyone else) is here. It is just a much much more powerful way to use computers.

jangxx 9mo ago
Don't say "we" when talking about yourself.
- franze 9mo ago
  I already do. And yes, it is a hypothesis about the future. Claude Code was just a first step. It will happen to the rest of computer use as well.
darkwater 9mo ago
Claude Code and agents are the hot new hammer, and they are cool, I use CC and like it for many things, but currently they suffer from the "hot new hammer" hype so people tend to think everything is a nail the LLM can handle. But you still need a screwdriver for screws, even if you can hammer them in.
- TeMPOraL 9mo ago
  That "hot new hammer" hype is a good thing given general enough tool, and LLMs very much are that. We did the same with smartphones, the Internet, personal computers, and even electricity. Some 150 years ago, humanity collectively decided to try and redo everything but with electricity. In some cases, it was a clear success - e.g. lights. It enabled further progress - see e.g. computers, MRI machines, etc. In other cases, it was a failure - see e.g. cars, which still rely on ICEs despite electric cars being first, because until recently batteries just were not there. And then, in many cases the adoption was partial - see e.g. power tools, which are usually electrical, but in professional / industrial use, there's lots of hydraulic/pressurized air powered variants. All the above took people trying things out, "throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks". We're at this stage with LLMs now.

photios 9mo ago

Copilot's agent mode is a disaster. Use better tools: try Claude Code or OpenCode (my favorite). It's a new ecosystem with its own (atrocious!) jargon that you need to learn. The good news is that it's not hard to do so. It's not as complex or revolutionary as everyone makes it look like. Everything boils down to techniques and frameworks of collecting context/prompt before handing it over to the model.

darkwater 9mo ago
Yep, basically this. In the end it helps having the mental model that (almost) everything related to agents is just a way to send the upstream LLM a better and more specific context for the task you need to solve at that specific time. i.e Claude Code "skills" are simply a markdown file in a subdirectory with a specific name that translates to a `/SKILL_NAME` command in Claude and a prompt that is injected each time that skill is mentioned or Claude thinks it needs to use, so it doesn't forget the specific way you want to handle that specific task.
- theshrike79 9mo ago
  Skills can (and IMO should) also contain scripts custom made for that skill. Like a code review skill would have scripts that read the actual code.
  - darkwater 9mo ago
    Thanks for the correction, TIL.
alkonaut 9mo ago
Sadly we have some partnership meaning it's Copilot or nothing.
- JeremyNT 9mo ago
  If you can use the Copilot CLI, it's highly likely you can use OpenCode with the same API key. It's worth doing a little research. The CLI tool matters. If you're not using opencode/claude you're missing out. But the latest OpenAI models are really quite good.

jonathanstrange 9mo ago

I'm doing the same. My reason is not the IDE, I just can't let AI agent software onto my machine. I have no trust at all in it and the companies who make this software. I neither trust them in terms of file integrity nor for keeping secrets secret, and I do have to keep secrets like API keys on my file system. Am I right in assuming that the people who use AI agent software use them in confined environments like VMs with tight version control? Then it makes sense but the setup is not worth the hassle for me.

breppp 9mo ago

I also sympathize with that approach, and found it sometimes better than agents. I believe some of the agentic IDEs are missing a "contained mode". Let me select lines in my code which you are allowed to edit in this prompt and nothing else, for these "add a function that does x" without starting to run amok

alkonaut 9mo ago
Yes. And some way of using an instructions file. Because interacting with an agent in a tiny plugin window without use of "agents.md" or some sort of persistent prompt you can adjust retry etc is horrible. Now it's "please add one unit test for Foobar()" and it goes away and thinks for 2 minues and does nothing then I point it to where the FooBar() which it didn't find and then adds a test method then I change the name to one I like better but now the AI change wasn't "accepted"(?) so the thing is borked... I think the UX for agents is important and ...this can't be it.

ramraj07 9mo ago

I recently pasted an error I found into claude code and asked who broke this. It found the commit and also found that someone else had fixed it in their branch. You should use claude code.

bojan 9mo ago
There's no reason this should not be possible in other IDEs, except for the vendor lock-in.
ctmnt 9mo ago
You don’t even need to paste. Connect it to your IDE (which should be as easy as installing the Claude plugin in your IDE and typing `ide` in `code`) and it’ll automatically pull in whatever you have selected.
JeremyNT 9mo ago
If your org has a relationship with MS/OpenAI (many do!) you can also use OpenCode with GPT-5.2 for some pretty impressive results. Once you see what is currently possible with this technique you will understand that programming as a field is doomed, or at the very least it's becoming something almost unrecognizable.

wiseowise 9mo ago

You just didn't drink enough cool-aid and have intact brain.

kaycey2022 9mo ago

I’m not as behind as that. But i cant figure out this loop thing. We have engineers here saying they are reviewing 100k lines of code a day, slinging 10 agents simultaneously. I just cannot figure out how that is humanly possible. Agentic coding has come a long way though. What you are describing sounds like a trust issue more than a skill issue. Some git scumming should fix that. Maybe what I’m going through is also a trust issue.