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If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?

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Re: If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?

#201

Post by shinycode »

jedberg wrote: post #173

The way I write code with AI is that I start with a project.md file, where I describe what I want done. I then ask it to make a plan.md file from that project.md to describe the changes it will make (or what it will create if Greenfield). I then iterate on that plan.md with the AI until it's what I want. I then ask it to make a detailed todo list from the plan.md and attach it to the end of plan.md. Once I'm fully sa…

I also do that and it works quite well to iterate on spec md files first. When every step is detailed and clear and all md files linked to a master plan that Claude code reads and updates at every step it helps a lot to keep it on guard rails. Claude code only works well on small increments because context switching makes it mix and invent stuff. So working by increments makes it really easy to commit a clean session and I ask it to give me the next prompt from the specs before I clear context. It always go sideways at some point but having a nice structure helps even myself to do clean reviews and avoid 2h sessions that I have to throw away. Really easier to adjust only what’s wrong at each step. It works surprisingly well

Re: If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?

#202

Post by fragmede »

panarky wrote: post #180
eru wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its much the same problem as asking, for example, if every single line you write, or every function, becomes a commit. Hmm, I think that's the wrong comparison? The more useful comparison might be: should all your notes you made and dead ends you tried become part of the commit?

When a human writes the code should all their slack messages about the project be committed into the repo?

That would be amazing! In the moment, it's a lot of noise, but say you're trying to figure out a bit of code that Greg wrote four years ago and oh btw he's no longer with the company. Having access to his emails and slack would be amazing context to try reverse engineer and figure out whytf he did what he did. Did he just pick a thing and run with it, so I can replace it and not worry about it, or was it a very intentional choice and do not replace, because everything else will break?

Re: If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?

#203

Post by shinycode »

frank00001 wrote: post #185
jedberg wrote: post #173

The way I write code with AI is that I start with a project.md file, where I describe what I want done. I then ask it to make a plan.md file from that project.md to describe the changes it will make (or what it will create if Greenfield). I then iterate on that plan.md with the AI until it's what I want. I then ask it to make a detailed todo list from the plan.md and attach it to the end of plan.md. Once I'm fully sa…

Sounds like the spec driven approach. You should take a look at this https://github.com/github/spec-kit

Thanks for the link ! I’m very curious about their choices and methods, I’ll try it

Re: If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?

#205

Post by jumploops »

jedberg wrote: post #173

The way I write code with AI is that I start with a project.md file, where I describe what I want done. I then ask it to make a plan.md file from that project.md to describe the changes it will make (or what it will create if Greenfield). I then iterate on that plan.md with the AI until it's what I want. I then ask it to make a detailed todo list from the plan.md and attach it to the end of plan.md. Once I'm fully sa…

I do something similar, but across three doc types: design, plan, and debug

Design works similar to your project.md file, but on a per feature request. I also explicitly ask it to outline open questions/unknowns.

Once the design doc (i.e. design/[feature].md) has been sufficiently iterated on, we move to the plan doc(s).

The plan docs are structured like `plan/[feature]/phase-N-[description].md`

From here, the agent iterates until the plan is "done" only stopping if it encounters some build/install/run limitation.

At this point, I either jump back to new design/plan files, or dive into the debug flow. Similar to the plan prompting, debug is instructed to review the current implementation, and outline N-M hypotheses for what could be wrong.

We review these hypotheses, sometimes iterate, and then tackle them one by one.

An important note for debug flows, similar to manual debugging, it's often better to have the agent instrument logging/traces/etc. to confirm a hypothesis, before moving directly to a fix.

Using this method has led to a 100% vibe-coded success rate both on greenfield and legacy projects.

Note: my main complaint is the sheer number of markdown files over time, but I haven't gotten around to (or needed to) automate this yet, as sometimes these historic planning/debug files are useful for future changes.

Re: If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?

#207

Post by wickedsight »

827a wrote: post #94

IMO: This might be a contrarian opinion, but I don't think so. Its much the same problem as asking, for example, if every single line you write, or every function, becomes a commit. The answer to this granularity is, much like anything, you have to think of the audience: Who is served by persisting these sessions? I would suspect that there is little reason why future engineers, or future LLMs, would need access to t…

> Who is served by persisting these sessions? I would suspect that there is little reason why future engineers, or future LLMs, would need access to them

I disagree. When working on legacy code, one of my biggest issues is usually the question 'why is this the way it is?' Devs hate documentation, Jira often isn't updated with decisions made during programming, so sometimes you just have to guess why 'wait(500)' or 'n = n - 1' are there.

If it was written with AI and the conversation history is available, I can ask my AI: 'why is this code here?', which would often save me a ton of time and headache when touching that code in the future.

Re: If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?

#208

Post by jillesvangurp »

I think that's covered by the YAGNI rule. It has very little value that rapidly drops off as you commit more code. Maybe some types of software you might want to store some stuff for compliance/auditing reasons. But beyond that, I don't see what you would use it for.

Re: If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?

#209

Post by D-Machine »

segmondy wrote: post #157

It's already bad enough that people are saying there's too much code to read and review. You want to add session to it? Running it again, might not yield the same output. These models are non deterministic and models are often changed and upgraded.

Part of the reason there is too much code to read and review is because we lack the information to contextualize that code.

In many cases, seeing the prompts would help to dramatically speed up rejecting lazy slop PRs (or accepting more careful AI-assisted PRs).

Re: If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?

#210

Post by medstrom »

insin wrote: post #199
solarkraft wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that probably not everything should be stored - it’s too noisy. But the reason the session is so interesting is precisely the later part of the conversation - all the corrections in the details, where the actual , more precise requirements crystallize.

AKA the code. You're all talking about the code.

The prompt is the code :) The code is like a compiled binary. How long until we put the prompts in `src/` and the code in `bin/`, I wonder...
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