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I agree completely. I just did my first “AI native coding project”. Both because for now I haven’t run into any quotas using Codex CLI with my $20/month ChatGP

I agree completely. I just did my first “AI native coding project”. Both because for now I haven’t run into any quotas using Codex CLI with my $20/month ChatGPT subscription and the company just gave everyone an $800/month Claude allowance. Before I even started the implementation I: 1. Put the initial sales contract with the business requirements. 2. Notes I got from talking to sales 3. The transcript of the initial discovery calls 4. My design diagrams that were well labeled (cloud architecture and what each lambda does) 5. The transcript of the design review and my explanations and answering questions. 6. My ChatGPT assisted breakdown of the Epics/stories and tasks I had to do for the PMO I then told ChatGPT to give a detailed breakdown of everything during the session as Markdown That was the start of my AGENTS.md file. While working through everything task by task and having Codex/Claude code do the coding, I told it to update a separate md file with what it did and when I told it to do something differently and why. Any developer coming in after me will have complete context of the project from the first git init and they and the agents will know the why behind every decision that was made. Can you say that about any project that was done before GenAI?

dijksterhuis 9mo ago
> Can you say that about any project that was done before GenAI? yes. the linux kernel and it's extensive mailing lists come to mind. in fact, any decent project which was/is built in a remote-only scenario tends to have extensive documentation along these lines, something like gitlab comes to mind there. personally i've included design documents with extensive notes, contracts, meeting summaries etc etc in our docs area / repo hosting at $PREVIOUS_COMPANY. only thing from your list we didn't have was transcripts because they're often less useful than a summary of "this is what we actually decided and why". edit -- there were some video/meeting audio recordings we kept around though. at least one was a tutoring session i did. maybe this is the first time you've felt able to do something like this in a short amount of time because of these GenAI tools? i don't know your story. but i was doing a lot of this by hand before GenAI. it took time, energy and effort to do. but your project is definitely not the first to have this level of detailed contextual information associated with it. i will, however, concede that these tools can make it it easier/faster to get there.
- raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
  Well, I was developing as a hobby for 10 years starting with an Apple //e in 65C02 assembly language before graduating from college…if that gives you a clue to my age and I am old enough that I am eligible to put catch up contributions in my 401K… If I had to scope this project before GenAI it would have taken two other developers to do the work I mentioned not to mention make changes to a web front end that another developer did for another client on a project I was leading - I haven’t touched front end code for over a decade
apsurd 9mo ago
That sounds really powerful, but also like burden shifts to the people that will maintain all this stuff after you're done having your fun. Tbh, I'm not exactly knocking it, it makes sense that leads are responsible for the architecture. I just worry that those leads having 100x influence is not default a good thing.
- raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
  My thought is that the markdown is the code and that Claude code/Codex is the “compiler”. The design was done by me. The modularity, etc. I tested for scalability, I checked the IAM permissions for security and I designed the locking mechanism and concurrency controls (which had a bug in it that was found by ChatGPT in thinking mode),
bonesss 9mo ago
> Can you say that about any project that was done before GenAI? … a project with a decomposition of top level tasks, minutes and meeting notes, a transcript, initial diagrams, a bunch of loose transcripts on soon to be outdated assumptions and design, and then a soon-to-be-outdated living and constantly modified AGENT file that will be to some extent added to some context and to some extent ignored and to some extent lie about whether it was consulted (and then to some extent lie more about if it was then followed)? Hard yes. I have absolutely seen far better initial project setups that are more complete, more focused, more holistically captured, and more utilitarian for the forthcoming evolution of design and system. Lots of places have comparable design foundations as mandatory, and in some well-worn government IT processes I’m aware of the point being described is a couple man-months or man-years of actual specification away from initial approval for development. Anyone using issue tracking will have better, searchable, tracking of “why”, and plenty of orgs mandate that from day 1. Those orgs likely are tracking contracts separately too — that kind of information is a bit special to have in a git repo that may have a long exciting life of sharing. Subversion, JIRA, and basic CRM setups all predate GPTs public launch.
- NitpickLawyer 9mo ago
  > soon to be outdated assumptions Wild assumption. Having docs and code in step has never been easier. > soon-to-be-outdated living and constantly modified AGENT file Quite contradictory. > I have absolutely seen far better initial project setups that are more complete, more focused, more holistically captured, and more utilitarian for the forthcoming evolution of design and system. From a single dev, in a day's work? I call massive bs on this.
- raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
  Absolutely no developer is going to search through issue trackers. Are you comparing that to while you are actually in your terminal telling the agent at to update the file with what you are doing and why? How many developers actually want to ruin their flow and use a bloated CRM or Jira that has some type of inane workflow set up by the PMO compared to just staying in the terminal. If there is any change to the initial contract, there is change order - you put that through the same workflow. And do you really want to use how the government works as the model of efficiency? No, this is coming from a right wing government hater or libertarian that says we don’t need government. But I’ve worked in the pub sec department of consulting (AWS ProServe WWPS).

dijksterhuis 9mo ago

> Can you say that about any project that was done before GenAI? yes. the linux kernel and it's extensive mailing lists come to mind. in fact, any decent project which was/is built in a remote-only scenario tends to have extensive documentation along these lines, something like gitlab comes to mind there. personally i've included design documents with extensive notes, contracts, meeting summaries etc etc in our docs area / repo hosting at $PREVIOUS_COMPANY. only thing from your list we didn't have was transcripts because they're often less useful than a summary of "this is what we actually decided and why". edit -- there were some video/meeting audio recordings we kept around though. at least one was a tutoring session i did. maybe this is the first time you've felt able to do something like this in a short amount of time because of these GenAI tools? i don't know your story. but i was doing a lot of this by hand before GenAI. it took time, energy and effort to do. but your project is definitely not the first to have this level of detailed contextual information associated with it. i will, however, concede that these tools can make it it easier/faster to get there.

raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
Well, I was developing as a hobby for 10 years starting with an Apple //e in 65C02 assembly language before graduating from college…if that gives you a clue to my age and I am old enough that I am eligible to put catch up contributions in my 401K… If I had to scope this project before GenAI it would have taken two other developers to do the work I mentioned not to mention make changes to a web front end that another developer did for another client on a project I was leading - I haven’t touched front end code for over a decade

apsurd 9mo ago

That sounds really powerful, but also like burden shifts to the people that will maintain all this stuff after you're done having your fun. Tbh, I'm not exactly knocking it, it makes sense that leads are responsible for the architecture. I just worry that those leads having 100x influence is not default a good thing.

raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
My thought is that the markdown is the code and that Claude code/Codex is the “compiler”. The design was done by me. The modularity, etc. I tested for scalability, I checked the IAM permissions for security and I designed the locking mechanism and concurrency controls (which had a bug in it that was found by ChatGPT in thinking mode),

bonesss 9mo ago

> Can you say that about any project that was done before GenAI? … a project with a decomposition of top level tasks, minutes and meeting notes, a transcript, initial diagrams, a bunch of loose transcripts on soon to be outdated assumptions and design, and then a soon-to-be-outdated living and constantly modified AGENT file that will be to some extent added to some context and to some extent ignored and to some extent lie about whether it was consulted (and then to some extent lie more about if it was then followed)? Hard yes. I have absolutely seen far better initial project setups that are more complete, more focused, more holistically captured, and more utilitarian for the forthcoming evolution of design and system. Lots of places have comparable design foundations as mandatory, and in some well-worn government IT processes I’m aware of the point being described is a couple man-months or man-years of actual specification away from initial approval for development. Anyone using issue tracking will have better, searchable, tracking of “why”, and plenty of orgs mandate that from day 1. Those orgs likely are tracking contracts separately too — that kind of information is a bit special to have in a git repo that may have a long exciting life of sharing. Subversion, JIRA, and basic CRM setups all predate GPTs public launch.

NitpickLawyer 9mo ago
> soon to be outdated assumptions Wild assumption. Having docs and code in step has never been easier. > soon-to-be-outdated living and constantly modified AGENT file Quite contradictory. > I have absolutely seen far better initial project setups that are more complete, more focused, more holistically captured, and more utilitarian for the forthcoming evolution of design and system. From a single dev, in a day's work? I call massive bs on this.
raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
Absolutely no developer is going to search through issue trackers. Are you comparing that to while you are actually in your terminal telling the agent at to update the file with what you are doing and why? How many developers actually want to ruin their flow and use a bloated CRM or Jira that has some type of inane workflow set up by the PMO compared to just staying in the terminal. If there is any change to the initial contract, there is change order - you put that through the same workflow. And do you really want to use how the government works as the model of efficiency? No, this is coming from a right wing government hater or libertarian that says we don’t need government. But I’ve worked in the pub sec department of consulting (AWS ProServe WWPS).