limited prompts work well for limited programs, or already well defined and cemented source bases.

once scope creeps up you need the guardrails of a carefully crafted prompt (and pre-prompts, tool hooks, AGENTS files, the whole gambit) -- otherwise it turns into cat wrangling rapidly.

Not in our (30+ year old software company) experience and we have large code bases with a lot of scope creep ; more than ever as we can deliver a lot more for a lot less (lot more revenue / profit too).