The Harness Is the Thing

Post by liampulles » Thu, Aug 27, 2026, 3:44 PM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #108

liampulles wrote: post #100

One will lose the opportunity to develop domain understanding if they do not get into the weeds of thinking through the problem. I use Claude plan mode to do relatively small changes and even then I find that if I actually try and think through the problem and solve it myself that I find good metaphors that will aid future work, and I will discover tangential issues which are then important to look at.

Do you explicitly ask for metaphors? I wonder if we need a list of things to tell AI to stay sharp, like this one. Sometimes I tell the model existing design is stupid and then it explains reasoning to me.

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 27, 2026, 4:05 PM UTC

bluegatty wrote: post #97

criley2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but just because you achieve results you consider acceptable with this method doesn't mean everyone does. I don't work where we can ship slop. I don't work where PRs can be merged based on what the agents say. I work where a human has to read and approve and own every single line of code. I work where the stakes are actually high, so the cost of not using the best tools in terms of human time are big. A si…

Yours was the casual dismissal; and based on a misunderstanding of what can be achieved. Based your arbitrary dismissal and unwillingness to even try to consider new patterns with which you may be unfamiliar - it may be difficult to communicate with you. I have the advantage of 'certainty' because I have the evidence over many projects / team members. We ship near perfect code. In addition to the hints above, we do t…