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Parallel AI agents are a game changer

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Re: Parallel AI agents are a game changer

#11

Post by ambicapter »

Obviously I'm an AI-tools skeptic, but this is hilarious:

> 1. Prepare issues with sufficient context

> Start by ensuring each GitHub issue contains enough context for agents to understand what needs to be built and how it integrates with the system. This might include details about feature behavior, file locations, database structure, or specific requirements such as displaying certain fields or handling edge cases.

> You can’t do half-hearted prompts and fix as you go, because those fixes come an hour later.

> Skills That Become More Important > Full-stack understanding > Problem decomposition > Good writting skills > QA and Code Review skills

This is just software engineering?!?

edit: On the other hand, maybe I can convince people in my org to get better at software engineering by telling them its for the AI to work better.

Re: Parallel AI agents are a game changer

#12

Post by osn9363739 »

Can this guy, or someone else post a full days (4-8 hours, or what ever is spent in the weeds) stream of work to youtube or something. I just want to watch the process to see what I'm missing. Or if there is anyone that already does that can they recommend it to me. I would appreciate it.

Re: Parallel AI agents are a game changer

#13

Post by merlincorey »

furyofantares wrote: post #5

The sweet spot for me is 2 agents on different projects. Surprisingly the context switch is easy. It's harder when doing 2 tasks on the same project.

> on different projects

This seems like an important caveat the author of the article failed to mention when they described this:

> you can have several agents running simultaneously - one building a user interface, another writing API endpoints, and a third creating database schemas.

If these are all in the same project then there has to be some required ordering to it or you get a frontend written to make use of a backend that doesn't have the endpoints used, and you get a backend that makes use of a different database schema than the separately generated database schema.

Re: Parallel AI agents are a game changer

#14

Post by [deleted] »

rcarr wrote: post #3
epolanski wrote: post #2

Look, I like AI coding but we're already way past the need for parallelism. LLMs write so much code in such a short time that the bottleneck is already the human having to review, correct, rewrite. Parallel agents working on different parts of the application just compound this problem worse, it's impossible to catch up. The only far fetched use case I can see is swarming hundreds of solutions against a properly desi…

You are the main thread: https://www.claudelog.com/mechanics/you-are-the-main-thread/

[deleted]

Re: Parallel AI agents are a game changer

#15

Post by furyofantares »

merlincorey wrote: post #13
furyofantares wrote: post #5

The sweet spot for me is 2 agents on different projects. Surprisingly the context switch is easy. It's harder when doing 2 tasks on the same project.

> on different projects This seems like an important caveat the author of the article failed to mention when they described this: > you can have several agents running simultaneously - one building a user interface, another writing API endpoints, and a third creating database schemas. If these are all in the same project then there has to be some required ordering to it or you get a frontend written to make use of a…

On the same project you can use worktrees or otherwise separate clones of the repo - that part is not that bad. My comment was just about my own context switch.

Re: Parallel AI agents are a game changer

#16

Post by shiroyasha »

ambicapter wrote: post #11

Obviously I'm an AI-tools skeptic, but this is hilarious: > 1. Prepare issues with sufficient context > Start by ensuring each GitHub issue contains enough context for agents to understand what needs to be built and how it integrates with the system. This might include details about feature behavior, file locations, database structure, or specific requirements such as displaying certain fields or handling edge cases.…

Yes. AI assisted software engineering is still software engineering. I don't see that part changing anytime soon.

Re: Parallel AI agents are a game changer

#17

Post by slig »

osn9363739 wrote: post #12

Can this guy, or someone else post a full days (4-8 hours, or what ever is spent in the weeds) stream of work to youtube or something. I just want to watch the process to see what I'm missing. Or if there is anyone that already does that can they recommend it to me. I would appreciate it.

https://youtu.be/xAKVi_jvvg4

Two hours of Web Dev Cody.

Re: Parallel AI agents are a game changer

#19

Post by DetroitThrow »

ambicapter wrote: post #11

Obviously I'm an AI-tools skeptic, but this is hilarious: > 1. Prepare issues with sufficient context > Start by ensuring each GitHub issue contains enough context for agents to understand what needs to be built and how it integrates with the system. This might include details about feature behavior, file locations, database structure, or specific requirements such as displaying certain fields or handling edge cases.…

>This is just software engineering?!?

Absolutely. The existence of vibe coding does not mean production code is going to be engineered without the same principles we've always used - even if we're using AI to generate a lot more code than before.

Any crowd suggesting that this was not the case has lost the plot, imo.

Re: Parallel AI agents are a game changer

#20

Post by kasey_junk »

merlincorey wrote: post #13
furyofantares wrote: post #5

The sweet spot for me is 2 agents on different projects. Surprisingly the context switch is easy. It's harder when doing 2 tasks on the same project.

> on different projects This seems like an important caveat the author of the article failed to mention when they described this: > you can have several agents running simultaneously - one building a user interface, another writing API endpoints, and a third creating database schemas. If these are all in the same project then there has to be some required ordering to it or you get a frontend written to make use of a…

This is just project management. Teams of software devs have been doing this for decades. And it’s easier with agents because there is no harm in letting one sit idle.
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