I agree with you overall, yet there’s one flow that works for me. Instead of speccing out a feature, I let PMs vibe code it. I then have the exact reference I need to build.

Maybe LLMs oneshotted the right way, maybe it needs fixes, maybe some fundamentals are misunderstood, in any case it’s easier for me to know what I need to build, for the PM to be aware of some limitations (LLMs do the job of pushing back and explaining) and overall for us to have to the point conversations.

It is somewhat orthogonal to what you say, when you focused on dev seniority, so that part stands true.

But I think “PMs armed with an LLM” can, when properly used, add a lot of value to the dev process.

▲ nunez a day ago | parent | next [-]

> I agree with you overall, yet there’s one flow that works for me. Instead of speccing out a feature, I let PMs vibe code it. I then have the exact reference I need to build.

Like BDD, but with something more accessible than Cucumber. I'm totally here for that.

It would be nice if people also committed their initial prompt and chat session with the LLM into their codebase. From a corporate standpoint, having that would be excellent business logic as code, if the code is coming from a PM or a stakeholder on the business side of the house. From an engineering standpoint, it would be an excellent addendum to the codebase's documentation.

▲ tharkun__ 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

FWIW, BDD and frameworks like Cucumber don't work at all in my experience. The people that'd need to fill these out don't do it properly (they can't) and then we, devs, are stuck with brittle and un-debuggable stuff that's worse than if we just used regular code to encode what we understood from them.

It's the same reason (most) PMs armed with an LLM still won't get anything usable done. They can't do it properly. They still need devs. But the gaps are shrinking. Some few PMs can get stuff done w/ both Cucumber, could wireframe UX with previous tools and can now do so much easier and better with an LLM.

    It would be nice if people also committed their initial prompt and chat session with the LLM into their codebase

I doubt you'd want this. It's a chat session for a reason. It's gonna be huge wall of text, especially if you meant to actually include all the internal prompting the LLM did while it was working. You'd also have all my "no dude, stop bullshitting me! I told to ignore X and use Y and to always double check Z and provide proof".

It would only "work" if every single piece of feature you wrote was 100% written by the LLM from a single, largish and well defined prompt, the LLM works for a few hours and out comes the feature. And even then you have no reproducability (even if you turned around and gave it to the exact same model, no retraining, newer model, system prompt etc.).

▲

rufasterisco 6 hours ago | parent [-]

There are ways to play around the single wall of test issue. Mostly, git lfs.

When it comes to “no dude stop etc etc” … that is valuable information. You can extract that and put down rules for agents so that you stop repeating it each time.

Same can be done at PR, so that you can review not just the code but also how you got there.

It’s trivial to go from session to a nicely polished html with side by side conversation.

If you want to try, username at gmail, I have a private repo with it running. I value critics, sorry for the plug ;)

Oh, on the different models side, i don’t see the advantage of reproducibility, or better, I don’t think I understand what you mean, can you help me see it?

	▲	tharkun__ 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I don't understand how "wall of text" is related to git large file support. The wall of text is a problem for me, the human. Sure, there are ways, like "be brief", caveman etc. In a large repo with lots of different people over time, I can't see how it won't just be wall of text again. It's just too much. TL;DR. And coz DR, the LLM will have buried bullshit in that text, which future session might read and "believe". As for "no dude", no that can't be put down into rules. Not all of it anyway. We have stuff encoded in the repo wide md file, I have my personal one etc. and the various agents still don't do what we tell them to in all cases or a new model comes out and it no longer works. For example, for finding the root cause of a bug, it's very important to have actual proof and references. It's getting there w/ my instructions in the .md but it doesn't always work and I do have to "dude" it from time to time. Is that back and forth valuable to have in files that are going to be part of the repo? I very highly doubt it. Having new rules that came out of the back and forth in a checked in AGENTS.md, sure, that is valuable. I've seen enough PR descriptions created by the agent. Fluffy wall of text that looks good but is factually wrong. Seen it way too many times. Too many people just look at whether it looks good and then pass it off as truth. I'm tired of it and making that into "nice HTML" doesn't make it better. It just makes it look even nicer but not more true. Re: reproducibility. My parent poster (and I guess you as well) wanted to have the prompt/conversation as "documentation". I don't see why that would be helpful. The only reason I could see would be for "reproducibility", which you won't get with an LLM. I don't see why else, but do tell me. What I can agree could be valuable are the "why"s. I.e. the stuff that already should have been part of the ticket/requirements document. If you want to store that inside the repo as text files, instead of the original tickets or documents, that's fine of course. But I don't see how a "recording of how the code came to be" is valuable. It's like having a recording of all my IDE keystrokes and intermediate code state in pre-LLM days. Not valuable. What's valuable are the requirements and the outcome (i.e. code). Not "the thing in between". Now don't get me wrong. Recordings of how people code/use their IDE can be a valuable teaching tool. Both as good and bad examples. And the same can be true for an agent coding session.

▲ rufasterisco 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I am actually working on that. Want to beta test? :)

Can invite you to the, for now private github repo.

Any feedback would be helpful!

▲ fatata123 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]