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The Coming Loop
221–230 of 322 posts
Re: The Coming Loop
#222[deleted]
Re: The Coming Loop
#223My experience is that I am bottle-necked on specs. The agent loop is less of a thing for me now. If I can get a clear understanding of what I want to build, communicate that to Claude Code in planning mode with the goal to write an actionable spec (not code, plan to write the spec) then I tend to get very good results once the agent goes to implement. But this strategy, while effective, puts a big load on me to write…
> I tend to get very good results How do you define the good result? Does the definition of success include clean, maintainable code? I am finding I need to be in the loop. My code ships to thousands of users, so any issues get amplified.
Yes, I review every PR (which is part of the bottleneck) and give strict feedback (as I mentioned, averaging 2 to 3 fixes per task).
What I'm saying is that there are some higher-level loops (as described in this article) that are outside of the bottlenecks I mentioned (spec creation and PR review).
For example, I may have 3 written and ready to go specs that are totally unrelated (don't touch the same files, each can go to PR stage with no conflict) but it isn't easy to keep the agent moving on them unless I do so manually. Having an outer-layer orchestrator that can move that along makes a lot of sense.
But when there are dependencies between tasks, it has to wait for my PR. And once I run out of good specs, it has to wait for me to write them.
Re: The Coming Loop
#224[deleted]
Re: The Coming Loop
#225My experience is that I am bottle-necked on specs. The agent loop is less of a thing for me now. If I can get a clear understanding of what I want to build, communicate that to Claude Code in planning mode with the goal to write an actionable spec (not code, plan to write the spec) then I tend to get very good results once the agent goes to implement. But this strategy, while effective, puts a big load on me to write…
"Writing specs" is the essential complexity of programming. What you're saying is that there's no silver bullet. Agents or no agents, punchcards or interpreters, programming is programming at the end of the day.
Re: The Coming Loop
#226My experience is that I am bottle-necked on specs. The agent loop is less of a thing for me now. If I can get a clear understanding of what I want to build, communicate that to Claude Code in planning mode with the goal to write an actionable spec (not code, plan to write the spec) then I tend to get very good results once the agent goes to implement. But this strategy, while effective, puts a big load on me to write…
This is exactly the way it should be! This is great! This is the most important part of engineering of systems that has been minimized over the past two decades in the rush to build. Now that the building is more automated, the specifications and system design can take the important lead again. Engineering and quality might be back!
Re: The Coming Loop
#227> Ideally all of that was also well documented. Where that understanding was lacking, it was generally regarded as something to improve upon.
In my experience, this was always an unrealized ideal. Too much pressure to ship, not enough to learn. To me the fact that I can interrogate Claude about this stuff is almost as valuable as the speed. (And I think it helps Claude too.)
Re: The Coming Loop
#228> My current status is that I have not had much success with this way of working for code I deeply care about If something is judgement heavy, "code i care deeply about", then i don't really agree with the direction of travel here. Don't try to delegate decisions you care deeply about. I do like the framing of agent loop vs harness loop, but only delegate stuff that you can accurately specify in advance, that usually…
> Don't try to delegate decisions you care deeply about.
YES. Or find a deterministic way to insert them :D
Re: The Coming Loop
#229What does any of that mean in practice? it's just rambling about abstract concepts that seem to be designed to hint at a bigger picture, when it's just getting AI to write code for you. Is this where it's going? Having to mystify our roles so it seems like we're still the thought leaders when actually we're just becoming pseudo-teachers that try and herd our group of AI idiots to the right conclusion for us so we don…
> What does any of that mean in practice? They want you to spend more tokens
> They want you to spend more tokens
Spending your tokens like some sort of primitive meat bag is passe and any developer doing that will be left behind by the true AI natives.
What you need to do this month is set up a central planning agent that creates a 5 year plan and then orchestrates teams of subagents to each direct subteams of subsubagents to fulfill your goals.
Have each team at every level inspect each other's work and authorize each agent up and down the chain to spend tokens on your behalf for the greater good.
With any luck, the US Administration will see the light and allow AI agents to open up their own credit cards on your behalf to eliminate unnecessary bottlenecks. Agentic Fintech is the future.
We need to move beyond this early stage where you give any thought to spending those tokens yourself!
Re: The Coming Loop
#230> You Cannot Quite Opt Out I am so over this. I cannot take anyone seriously that claims inevitability of their ideas, and how you must adopt them without "being left behind". If these tools are so good and so capable the result should be able to speak for themselves rather than this FOMO inducing, emotional language.
It's especially rich when you consider the shitty code the "loop" produces. The article quotes Boris Cherny as if he's someone to look up to. But then you look at the code he produces with "loops", and it's an unmaintainable ball of mud: [1] https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/116324676116121930 [2] https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/116349873176941251
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