I think you're on to something: It sounds like the developer needs to be more hands-on in making changes; as opposed to treating the AI like a subordinate with autonomy.

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For example: About two years ago I worked with a contractor who was a lot more junior than our team needed. I'd give him instructions, and then the next day spend about 2-3 hours fixing his code. In total, I was spending half of my time handholding the contractor through their project.

The problem was that I had my own assignments; and the contractor was supposed to be able to do their job with minimal oversight. (IE, roughly 0.5-1.5 hours of my day.)

If the contractor was helping me with my assignment; IE, if the contractor was my assistant, I'd have loved the arrangement.

(In case you're wondering how it ended up for the contractor, we let him go and hired someone who worked out great.)

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I suspect if the OP can figure out how to make the AI an assistant, instead of an employee with autonomy, then it will be a better arrangement. I personally haven't found an AI that does that for me, but I suspect I'm either using it incorrectly or using the wrong tools.

If you haven’t done so, try changing your prompt styles. It’s an assistant for me but I’m finding it needs less and less babysitting. What I just tried:

Ask it first to plan out a project you briefly described, focus on the planning, file structure is ok but no coding. Tell it what functionality is integrated, or what what should become a standalone module. Ask it to summarize.

I then start a new chat for the code, and tell it follow the summary. Tell it “before you make code, ask questions if there is commonly another way to do this.

Chances are you’ve done this way more than me and tried variations of this. But it’s working here as an assistant. I’m now doing wIdk I wasn’t hired for, and people are happy.