I bought into that idea a month or two ago, that more control and detailed instructions would deliver a clean result. That just led me down a rabbit hole of endless prompt re-runs and optimization loops. Many time I thought I had the final, perfect prompt, the next iteration slightly worsened the output. And sometimes the output was the same.

The last 20-30% of precision is brutal. The time and tokens we burn trying to perfect a prompt is simply not an optimal use of engineering hours. The problem is simple: Companies prioritize profit over the optimal solution, and the initial sales pitch was about replacement then it changed now its all about speed. I'm not making a case against AI or LLMs; I'm saying the current workflow, a path of least resistance means we are inevitably progressing toward more technical debt and cleanup at our hands.