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Agentic Engineering Patterns

simonwillison.net

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Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns

#61

Post by paganel »

abm53 wrote: post #58
pkorzeniewski wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I rarely see mentioned is that often creating code by hand is simply faster (at least for me) than using AI. Creating a plan for AI, waiting for execution, verifying, prompting again etc. can take more time than just doing it on my own with a plan in my head (and maybe some notes). Creating something from scratch or doing advanced refactoring is almost always faster with AI, but most of my daily tasks are b…

The rebuttal to this would be that you can do many such tasks in parallel. I’m not sure it’s really true in practice yet, but that would certainly be the claim.

But can you mentally "keep hold" (for lack of a better term) of those tasks that are getting executed in parallel? Honestly asking.

Because, after they're done/have finished executing, I guess you still have to "check" their output, integrate their results into the bigger project they're (supposedly) part of etc, and for me the context-switching required to do all that is mentally taxing. But maybe this only happens because my brain is not young enough, that's why I'm asking.

Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns

#62

Post by fendy3002 »

maccard wrote: post #20
fnands wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was the last time you tried? I think trying agents to do larger tasks was always very hit or miss, up to about the end of last year. In the past couple of months I have found them to have gotten a lot better (and I'm not the only one). My experience with what coding assistants are good for shifted from: smart autocomplete -> targeted changes/additions -> full engineering

I’m not OP but every time I post a comment with this sentiment I get told “the latest models are what you need”. If every 3 months you are saying “it’s ready as long as you use the latest model”, then it wasn’t ready 3 months ago and it’s not likely to be ready now. To answer your question, I’ve tried both Claude code and Antigravity in the last 2 weeks and I’m still finding them struggling. AG with Gemini regularly…

It depends on what you're handling. Frontend (not css), swagger, mundane CRUD is where it shines. Something more complex that need a bit harder calculation usually make the agents struggling.

Especially good to navigate the code if you're unfamiliar with it (the code). If you have known the code for good, you'll find it's usually faster to debug and code by yourself.

Opus 4.6 with claude code vscode extension

Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns

#64

Post by aksjfp222 »

I mainly work with documents as a white collar worker but have vibe coded a few bits.

The thing I keep coming back to is that it's all code. Almost all white collar professions have at least some key outputs in code. Whether you are a store manager filling out reports or a marketing firm or a teacher, there is so much code.

This means you can give claude code a branded document template, fill it out, include images etc. and uploaded to our cloud hosting.

With this same guidance and taste, I'm doing close to the work of 5 people.

Setup: Claude code with full API access to all my digital spaces + tmux running 3-5 tasks in parallel

Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns

#65

Post by thbb123 »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #52
benrutter wrote: post #10

I use AI in my workflow mostly for simple boilerplate, or to troubleshoot issues/docs. I've dipped into agentic work now and again, but never been very impressed with the output (well, that there is any functioning output is insanely impressive, but it isn't code I want to be on the hook for complaining). I hear a lot of people saying the same, but similarly a bunch of people I respect saying they barely write code a…

One thing I rarely see mentioned is that often creating code by hand is simply faster (at least for me) than using AI. Creating a plan for AI, waiting for execution, verifying, prompting again etc. can take more time than just doing it on my own with a plan in my head (and maybe some notes). Creating something from scratch or doing advanced refactoring is almost always faster with AI, but most of my daily tasks are b…

My way of phrasing this: I need to activate my personal transformers on my inner embeddings space to really figure what is it that I truly want to write.

Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns

#66

Post by [deleted] »

raincole wrote: post #54
yoaviram wrote: post #24

Yesterday I wrote a post about exactly this. Software development, as the act of manually producing code, is dying. A new discipline is being born. It is much closer to proper engineering. Like an engineer overseeing the construction of a bridge, the job is not to lay bricks. It is to ensure the structure does not collapse. The marginal cost of code is collapsing. That single fact changes everything. https://nonstruc…

> wrote Quite a heavy-lifting word here. You understand why people flagged that post right? It's painfully non-human. I'm all for utilizing LLM, but I highly suggest you read Simon's posts. He's obviously a heavy AI user, but even his blog posts aren't that inorganic and that's why he became the new HN blog babe. [0]: I personally believe Simon writes with his own voice, but who knows?

[deleted]

Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns

#67

Post by alansaber »

The best thing I read in this was "Hoard things you know how to do" > basically get an LLM to mutate an existing function you know is 1. well written and 2. works. If you have many such components you're still assembling code rapidly but using building blocks you actually understand in depth, rather than getting an LLM to shit out something verbose.

Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns

#68

Post by tacone »

The patterns in the article might be a starter, but there's so much more to cover:

agents role (Orchestrator, QA etc.), agents communication, thinking patterns, iteration patterns, feature folders, time-aware changelog tracking, prompt enforcing, real time steering.

We might really need a public Wiki for that (C2 [1] style)

[1]: https://wiki.c2.com/

Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns

#69

Post by logicprog »

Madmallard wrote: post #56

patterns that may help increase subjective perception of reliability from non-deterministic text generators trained on the theft of millions of developer's work for the past 25 years.

I think it's nonsensical to insist that it would only be a subjective improvement. The tests either exist and ensure that there aren't bugs in certain areas, or they don't. The agent is either in a feedback loop with those tests and continues to work until it has satisfied them or it doesn't.

Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns

#70

Post by darkwater »

fnands wrote: post #12
benrutter wrote: post #10

I use AI in my workflow mostly for simple boilerplate, or to troubleshoot issues/docs. I've dipped into agentic work now and again, but never been very impressed with the output (well, that there is any functioning output is insanely impressive, but it isn't code I want to be on the hook for complaining). I hear a lot of people saying the same, but similarly a bunch of people I respect saying they barely write code a…

When was the last time you tried? I think trying agents to do larger tasks was always very hit or miss, up to about the end of last year. In the past couple of months I have found them to have gotten a lot better (and I'm not the only one). My experience with what coding assistants are good for shifted from: smart autocomplete -> targeted changes/additions -> full engineering

> My experience with what coding assistants are good for shifted from:

> smart autocomplete -> targeted changes/additions -> full engineering

Define "full engineering". Because if you say "full engineering" I would expect the agent to get some expected product output details as input and produce all by itself the right implementation for the context (i.e. company) it lives in.

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