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Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

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Re: Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

#181

Post by x0x0 »

benrutter wrote: post #179

I'm so curious around what people's median experience is of AI coding tools. I've tried agents every now and then, recently for something very simple- add an option to request csb format in a data api. The results were, well, not good. . . I ended up undoing literally all changes because writing from scratch was a lot easier than trying to refactor the total mess it has made from what I'd have thought was a trivial f…

I'm the same, with the same question if it's me.

I've had success with eg spitting out templated html; sometimes with css; sometimes with writing tests where I'm very specific about what I want (set up these structures, test this condition), etc. It's mediocre (good start, very far from production) with writing screens in react native. It does slightly better on rails, but far from production ready.

After that, it kinda works, but my effort level to turn the output into working code is higher than just writing it myself.

Re: Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

#183

Post by troupo »

simonw wrote: post #147
troupo wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, LLMs always, without fail get important details wrong. - incessantly duplicating already existing functionality: utility functions, UI components etc. - skipping required parameters like passing current user/actor to DB-related functions - completely ignoring large and small chunks of existing UI and UI-related functionality like layouts or existing styles - using ad-hoc DB queries or even iterating over full…

Sounds to me like you'd benefit from providing detailed instructions to LLMs about how they should avoid duplicating functionality (which means documenting the functionality they should be aware of), what kind of parameters are always required, setting up "proper DB queries" etc. ... which is exactly the kind of thing this new skills mechanism is designed to solve.

> Sounds to me like you'd benefit from providing detailed instructions to LLMs about how they should avoid duplicating functionality

That they routinely ignore.

> which means documenting the functionality they should be aware of

Which means spending inordinate amounts of time writing down about every single function and component and css and style which can otherwise be easily discovered by just searching. Or by looking at adjacent files.

> which is exactly the kind of thing this new skills mechanism is designed to solve.

I tried it yesterday. It immediately duplicated functionality, ignored existing styles and components, and created ad-hoc queries. It did feel like there were fewer times when it did that, but it's hard to quantify.

Re: Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

#184

Post by habinero »

wrs wrote: post #104
nightski wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously if you instruct the autocomplete engine to fill in questions it will. That's not the point. The LLM has no model of the problem it is trying to solve, nor does it attempt to understand the problem better. It is merely regurgitating. This can be extremely useful. But it is very limiting when it comes to using as an agent to write code.

You can work with the LLM to write down a model for the code (aka a design document) that it can then repeatedly ingest into the context before writing new code. That what “plan mode” is for. The technique of maintaining a design document and a plan/progress document that get updated after each change seems to make a big difference in keeping the LLM on track. (Which makes sense…exactly the same thing works for human…

Every time I hear someone say something like this, I think of the pigeons in the Skinner box who developed quirky superstitious behavior when pellets were dispensed at random.

Re: Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

#185

Post by habinero »

rkomorn wrote: post #103
Retric wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who hurt you? Sorry couldn’t resist. Agile’s point was getting feedback during the process rather than after something is complete enough to be shipped thus minimizing risk and avoiding wasted effort. Instead people are splitting up major projects into tiny shippable features and calling that agile while missing the point.

I've never seen a working scrum/agile/sprint/whatever product/project management system and I'm convinced it's because I've just never seen an actual implementation of one. "Splitting up major projects into tiny shippable features and calling that agile" feels like a much more accurate description of what I've experienced. I wish I'd gotten to see the real thing(s) so I could at least have an informed opinion.

People misunderstand the system, I think. It's not holy writ, you take the parts of it that work for your team and ditch the rest. Iterate as you go.

The failure modes I've personally seen is an organization that isn't interested in cooperating or the person running the show is more interested in process than people. But I'd say those teams would struggle no matter what.

Re: Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

#186

Post by rkomorn »

habinero wrote: post #185
rkomorn wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen a working scrum/agile/sprint/whatever product/project management system and I'm convinced it's because I've just never seen an actual implementation of one. "Splitting up major projects into tiny shippable features and calling that agile" feels like a much more accurate description of what I've experienced. I wish I'd gotten to see the real thing(s) so I could at least have an informed opinion.

People misunderstand the system, I think. It's not holy writ, you take the parts of it that work for your team and ditch the rest. Iterate as you go. The failure modes I've personally seen is an organization that isn't interested in cooperating or the person running the show is more interested in process than people. But I'd say those teams would struggle no matter what.

I put a lot of the responsibility for the PMing failures I've seen on the engineering side not caring to invest anything at all into the relationship.

Ultimately, I think it's up to the engineering side to do its best to leverage the process for better results, and I've seen very little of that (and it's of course always been the PM side's fault).

And you're right: use what works for you. I just haven't seen anything that felt like it actually worked. Maybe one problem is people iterating so fast/often they don't actually know why it's not working.

Re: Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

#187

Post by aydyn »

benrutter wrote: post #179

I'm so curious around what people's median experience is of AI coding tools. I've tried agents every now and then, recently for something very simple- add an option to request csb format in a data api. The results were, well, not good. . . I ended up undoing literally all changes because writing from scratch was a lot easier than trying to refactor the total mess it has made from what I'd have thought was a trivial f…

Think of this: whats the likelihood that what you are asking for would be found in some public github repo? If its high then you are good to go.

Re: Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

#188

Post by cosmodust »

benrutter wrote: post #179

I'm so curious around what people's median experience is of AI coding tools. I've tried agents every now and then, recently for something very simple- add an option to request csb format in a data api. The results were, well, not good. . . I ended up undoing literally all changes because writing from scratch was a lot easier than trying to refactor the total mess it has made from what I'd have thought was a trivial f…

It's very use case specific, I find them really good in simple repetitive tasks as long as you guide them at low level. Although you do need to keep a close eye as they easily spoil your existing work.

Re: Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

#189

Post by aydyn »

jvanderbot wrote: post #117
d_sem wrote: post #72

This article left me wishing it was "How I'm using coding agents to do task better" I've been exploring AI for two years now. It's certainly upgraded itself from the toy classification to a basic utility. However, I increasingly run into its limitations and find reverting to pre-LLM ways of working more robust, faster, and more mentally sustainable. Does someone have concrete examples of integrating LLM in a workflow…

My impression is we're still in the tinkering phase. The metrics are coming.

What metrics? We could never objectively measure productivity except in the macro economic sense, so what makes you think we'll be able to now?

Re: Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

#190

Post by smrtinsert »

simonw wrote: post #21

I can't recommend this post strongly enough. The way Jesse is using these tools is wildly more ambitious than most other people. Spend some time digging around in his https://github.com/obra/Superpowers repo. I wrote some notes on this last night: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/10/superpowers/

Curious what you think of sub agents, don't they still consume a massive amount of tokens compared to simply running in main context? I'm skeptical of any process that starts massively delegating to sub agents. I'm on Pro and don't think its worth upgrading to 200 a month just to not pollute main context.
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