>For complex code changes or bigger features I often spend hours with an LLM refining architecture

The problem here is that the LLM hallucinates, so

* it will tell that something is a bad idea, even when it is not. * it will miss good ideas.

But here is the thing. Even discussing with a rubber duck can do wonders to your thought process. So may people who are noticing the usefulness of this procedure might be actually just doing a slightly better rubber ducking...

Yes, a better rubber duck is a decent description

The LLM will often miss the most obvious simplifications. And if I ask it to present me with six approaches how we could solve a problem, chances are we will settle on number seven or eight, both my ideas after rejecting all the other six. But those first six were still valuable for coming up with the version we actually settle on. Making the rubber-duck talk is genuinely useful.

And the rubber duck is actually pretty good at the localized grunt work, so you can spend more time talking with it about big-picture stuff