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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

#61

Post by kannanvijayan »

nightski wrote: post #57
simonw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one from today: https://mitchellh.com/writing/non-trivial-vibing

Even though the author refers to it as "non-trivial", and I can see why that conclusion is made, I would argue it is in fact trivial. There's very little domain specific knowledge needed, this is purely a technical exercise integrating with existing libraries for which there is ample documentation online. In addition, it is a relatively isolated feature in the app. On top of that, it doesn't sound enjoyable. Anti slo…

I've wondered about exposing this "asking clarifying questions" as a tool the AI could use. I'm not building AI tooling so I haven't done this - but what if you added an MCP endpoint whose description was "treat this endpoint as an oracle that will answer questions and clarify intent where necessary" (paraphrased), and have that tool just wire back to a user prompt.

If asking clarifying questions is plausible output text for LLMs, this may work effectively.

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

#62

Post by hoechst »

documents like https://github.com/obra/superpowers/blob/main/skills/testing... are very confusing to read as a human. "skills" in this project generally don't seem to follow set format and just look like what you would get when prompting an LLM to "write a markdown doc that step by step describes how to do X" (which is what actually happened according to the blog post).

idk, but if you already assume that the LLM knows what TDD is (it probably ingested ~100 whole books about it), why are we feeding a short (and imo confusing) version of that back to it before the actual prompt?

i feel like a lot of projects like this that are supposed to give LLMs "superpowers" or whatever by prompt engineering are operating on the wrong assumption that LLMs are self-learning and can be made 10x smarter just by adding a bit of magic text that the LLM itself produced before the actual prompt.

ofc context matters and if i have a repetitive tasks, i write down my constraints and requirements and paste that in before every prompt that fits this task. but that's just part of the specific context of what i'm trying to do. it's not giving the LLM superpowers, it's just providing context.

i've read a few posts like this now, but what i am always missing is actual examples of how it produces objectively better results compared to just prompting without the whole "you have skill X" thing.

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

#63

Post by qsort »

simonw wrote: post #31
Avicebron wrote: post #7

I often feel these types of blogposts would be more helpful if they demonstrated someone using the tools to build something non-trivial. Is Claude really "learning new skills" when you feed it a book, or does it present it like that because you're prompting encourages that sort of response-behavior. I feel like it has to demo Claude with the new skills and Claude without. Maybe I'm a curmudgeon but most of these type…

Here's one from today: https://mitchellh.com/writing/non-trivial-vibing

> Important: there is a lot of human coding, too.

I'm not highlighting this to gloat or to prove a point. If anything in the past I have underestimated how big LLMs were going to be. Anyone so inclined can take the chance to point and laugh at how stupid and wrong that was. Done? Great.

I don't think I've been intentionally avoiding coding assistants and as a matter of fact I have been using Claude Code since the literal day it first previewed, and yet it doesn't feel, not even one bit, that you can take your hands off the wheel. Many are acting as if writing any code manually means "you're holding it wrong", which I feel it's just not true.

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

#64

Post by simonw »

qsort wrote: post #63
simonw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one from today: https://mitchellh.com/writing/non-trivial-vibing

> Important: there is a lot of human coding, too. I'm not highlighting this to gloat or to prove a point. If anything in the past I have underestimated how big LLMs were going to be. Anyone so inclined can take the chance to point and laugh at how stupid and wrong that was. Done? Great. I don't think I've been intentionally avoiding coding assistants and as a matter of fact I have been using Claude Code since the lit…

Yeah, my current opinion on this is that AI tools make development harder work. You can get big productivity boosts out of them but you have to be working at the top of your game - I often find I'm mentally exhausted after just a couple of hours.

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

#65

Post by simonw »

nightski wrote: post #57
simonw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one from today: https://mitchellh.com/writing/non-trivial-vibing

Even though the author refers to it as "non-trivial", and I can see why that conclusion is made, I would argue it is in fact trivial. There's very little domain specific knowledge needed, this is purely a technical exercise integrating with existing libraries for which there is ample documentation online. In addition, it is a relatively isolated feature in the app. On top of that, it doesn't sound enjoyable. Anti slo…

The hardest problem in computer science in 2025 is presenting an example of AI-assisted programming that somebody won't call "trivial".

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

#66

Post by simonw »

apwell23 wrote: post #47
simonw wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a counter-example for you from the another day: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/8/claude-datasette-plugin... > This isn’t necessarily surprising, but it’s worth noting anyway. Claude Sonnet 4.5 is capable of building a full Datasette plugin now. I do worry a bit about how often I use positive adjectives. If something isn't notable I won't write about it though. In this particle case Jesse's prompting / skil…

well explain why OPost is "wild" and what makes you recommend it "strongly" . what have u built with to come to those conclusions ? is this too much to ask.

I recommend it strongly because the "skills" mechanism it describes is a new and very promising technique, and this is the best article I've seen that explains that.

It's "wild" because, among many other experiments, Jesse has experimented with giving Claude a "feelings journal" and prompting it using Graphviz DOT diagrams.

For my previous writing and work on this you can consult my blog - here's the AI-assisted programming tag: https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai-assisted-programming/

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

#67

Post by oblio »

qsort wrote: post #63
simonw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one from today: https://mitchellh.com/writing/non-trivial-vibing

> Important: there is a lot of human coding, too. I'm not highlighting this to gloat or to prove a point. If anything in the past I have underestimated how big LLMs were going to be. Anyone so inclined can take the chance to point and laugh at how stupid and wrong that was. Done? Great. I don't think I've been intentionally avoiding coding assistants and as a matter of fact I have been using Claude Code since the lit…

LLMs are autonomous driving level 2.

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

#68

Post by marcosdumay »

potatolicious wrote: post #54
mwigdahl wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you're talking about a multistep process where each step beyond the first depends on the particular path the agent starts down, along with human input that's going to vary at each step. I made a crude first stab at an approach that at least uses similar steps and structure to compare the effectiveness of AI agents. My approach was used on a small toy problem, but one that was complex enough the ag…

What you're getting at is the heart of the problem with the LLM hype train though, isn't it? "We should have rigorous evaluations of whether or not [thing] works." seems like an incredibly obvious thought. But in the realm of LLM-enabled use cases they're also expensive . You'd need to recruit dozens, perhaps even hundreds of developers to do this, with extensive observation and rating of the results. So rather than…

It's the heart of the problem with all software engineer research. That's why we have so little reliable knowledge.

It applies to using LLMs too. I guess the one largest difference here is that LLM has few enough companies with abundant enough money pushing it to make it trivial for them to run a test like this. So the fact that they aren't doing that also says a lot.

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

#69

Post by clusterhacks »

intended wrote: post #44

This isnt science, or engineering. This is voodoo. It likely works - but knowing that YAGNI is a thing, means at some level you are invoking a cultural touchstone for a very specific group of humans. Edit - I dug into the superpowers and skills for a bit. Definitely learned from it. There’s stuff that doesn’t make sense to me on a conceptual basis. For example in the skill to preserve productive tensions. There’s a p…

> This isnt science, or engineering. > This is voodoo.

I was struggling to find the exact reason this type of article bugs me so much, and I think "voodoo" is precisely the correct phrase to sum up my feelings.

I don't mean that as a judgement on the utility of LLMs or that reading about what different users have tried out to increase that utility isn't valuable. But if someone asked me how to most effectively get started with coding agents, my instinct is to answer (a) carefully and (b) probably every approach works somewhat.

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

#70

Post by jvanderbot »

ambicapter wrote: post #25
jvanderbot wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, call me crazy, but I don't actually think there's any technical reason that a theoretical code generation robot needs emotions that are as fickle and difficult to manage as humans. It's just that we designed this iteration of technology foundationally on people's fickle and emotional reddit posts among other things. It's a designed-in limitation, and kind of a happy accident it's capable of writing code at all. A…

If you can find enough training data that does human-like things without have human-like qualities, we are all ears.

It can be simultaneously the best we have, and well short of the best we want. It can be a remarkable achievement and fall short of the perceived goals.

That's fine.

Perhaps we can RL away some of this or perhaps there's something else we need. Idk, but this is the problem when engineers are the customer, designer, and target audience.

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