Does anyone else still keep everything super simple by just including .md files in project for guardrails and do all edits manually by file upload and clipboard?

Sure, it's tedious, but I get to directly observe every change.

I guess I just don't feel comfortable with more black box magic beyond the LLM itself.

Don’t quite follow.

So you only use the chat UI and copy and paste from there?

Or do you use CC but don’t let it automatically update files?

I just upload the file I want to change and the file with associated tests. Anything more than that and the ROI goes way down on slop generated. But I'll admit Gemini at least is getting good at "implement the function with a TODO describing what needs to be done". No need for anything but the Gemini file uploader, and copy pasting the results if they look good.