This is definitely the right problem to focus on. I think the answer is a different LLM structure that has unlimited context. The transformer with causal masks for training block got us here but they are now limiting us in many massive ways.
Focus and Context and LLMs
11–20 of 51 posts
Re: Focus and Context and LLMs
#12The funny thing about vibe coding is that God tier vibe coders think they're in DGAF mode. But people who are actually in DGAF mode and just say "Make instagram for me" think they're in god tier.
But agreed, there needs to be a better way for these agents to figure out what context to select. It doesn't seem like this will be too much of a large issue to solve though?
Re: Focus and Context and LLMs
#13This article is knocking down a very expansive claim that most serious (ie: not vibe-coding) developers aren't making. Their point is that LLM agents have not yet reached the point where they can finish a complicated job end-to-end, and that if you want to do a completely hands-off project, where only the LLM generates any code, it takes a lot of prompting effort to accomplish.
This seems true, right now!
But in building out stuff with LLMs, I don't expect (or want) them to do the job end-to-end. I've ~25 merged PRs into a project right now (out of ~40 PRs generated). Most merged PRs I pulled into Zed and cleaned something up. At around PR #10 I went in and significantly restructured the code.
The overall process has been much faster and more pleasant than writing from scratch, and, notably, did not involve me honing my LLM communications skills. The restructuring work I did was exactly the same kind of thing I do on all my projects; until you've got something working it's hard to see what the exact right shape is. I expect I'll do that 2-3 more times before the project is done.
I feel like Kenton Varda was trying to make a point in the way they drove their LLM agent; the point of that project was in part to record the 2025 experience of doing something complicated end-to-end with an agent. That took some doing. But you don't have to do that to get a lot of acceleration from LLMs.
Re: Focus and Context and LLMs
#14Has the author tried Claude Code?
It’s the first useful “agent” (LLM in a loop + tools) that I’ve tried.
IME it is hard to explain why it’s better than e.g. Aider or Cursor, but once you try it you’ll migrate your workflow pretty quickly.
Re: Focus and Context and LLMs
#15Has the author tried Claude Code? It’s the first useful “agent” (LLM in a loop + tools) that I’ve tried. IME it is hard to explain why it’s better than e.g. Aider or Cursor, but once you try it you’ll migrate your workflow pretty quickly.
How much transparency does Claude Code give you into what it's doing? I like IDE-integrated agents as they show diffs and allow focused prompting for specific areas of concern. And I get to control what's in context at any given time in a longer thread. I haven't tried Claude's thing in a while, but from what I gather it's more of a "prompt and pray" kind of agent.. ?
Re: Focus and Context and LLMs
#16Has the author tried Claude Code? It’s the first useful “agent” (LLM in a loop + tools) that I’ve tried. IME it is hard to explain why it’s better than e.g. Aider or Cursor, but once you try it you’ll migrate your workflow pretty quickly.
How much transparency does Claude Code give you into what it's doing? I like IDE-integrated agents as they show diffs and allow focused prompting for specific areas of concern. And I get to control what's in context at any given time in a longer thread. I haven't tried Claude's thing in a while, but from what I gather it's more of a "prompt and pray" kind of agent.. ?
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Re: Focus and Context and LLMs
#17Has the author tried Claude Code? It’s the first useful “agent” (LLM in a loop + tools) that I’ve tried. IME it is hard to explain why it’s better than e.g. Aider or Cursor, but once you try it you’ll migrate your workflow pretty quickly.
How much transparency does Claude Code give you into what it's doing? I like IDE-integrated agents as they show diffs and allow focused prompting for specific areas of concern. And I get to control what's in context at any given time in a longer thread. I haven't tried Claude's thing in a while, but from what I gather it's more of a "prompt and pray" kind of agent.. ?
My experience is that you can be very targeted in your promoting with Claude code and it mostly gets good results. You can also ask it early on to create a branch and create logical commits as it works. This way, you can examine smaller code changes later in a PR (or git log).
Or if you want to work more manually, you could do the same but not allow full access to git commit. That way it will request access each time it’s ready to commit and you can take that time to review diffs.
Re: Focus and Context and LLMs
#18Has the author tried Claude Code? It’s the first useful “agent” (LLM in a loop + tools) that I’ve tried. IME it is hard to explain why it’s better than e.g. Aider or Cursor, but once you try it you’ll migrate your workflow pretty quickly.
> IME it is hard to explain why it’s better than e.g. Aider or Cursor
i have cursor through work but i am tempted to shell out $100 because of this hype.
is it better than using claude models in cursor?
Re: Focus and Context and LLMs
#19Has the author tried Claude Code? It’s the first useful “agent” (LLM in a loop + tools) that I’ve tried. IME it is hard to explain why it’s better than e.g. Aider or Cursor, but once you try it you’ll migrate your workflow pretty quickly.
It can get surprisingly dumb surprisingly fast.
Today I spent easily half an hour trying to make it solve a layout issue it itself introduced when porting a component.
It was a complex port it executed perfectly. And then it completely failed to even create a simple wrapper that fixed a flexbox issue.
BTW. Claude (Code and Cursor) is over-indexed on "let's randomly add and remove h-full/overflow-auto and pretend it works ad infinitum"
Re: Focus and Context and LLMs
#20Has the author tried Claude Code? It’s the first useful “agent” (LLM in a loop + tools) that I’ve tried. IME it is hard to explain why it’s better than e.g. Aider or Cursor, but once you try it you’ll migrate your workflow pretty quickly.
It can get surprisingly dumb surprisingly fast. Today I spent easily half an hour trying to make it solve a layout issue it itself introduced when porting a component. It was a complex port it executed perfectly. And then it completely failed to even create a simple wrapper that fixed a flexbox issue. BTW. Claude (Code and Cursor) is over-indexed on "let's randomly add and remove h-full/overflow-auto and pretend it w…
> And then it completely failed to even create a simple wrapper that fixed a flexbox issue.
yea this is the problem with vibe coding. its hard to understand and keep tabs on nitty gritty when stuff is being generated for you. No matter how much you 'review' it, it just doesn't stick in the same way if you were writing code. You are really screwed if you have debug something that llm throws its hands up on.