The one thing that using AI to code (or any involved task, for that matter) changes is your perception of when it’s time to stop. Time itself can decide whether something makes it in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That’s not the case anymore. Now, you think it, in less than a day, you can probably build it. No 12-hour marathon computer sessions: you might spend 12 minutes. Your imagination is now that hard stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For me, that’s problematic. I think too much<\/em>, so my ideas can become grandiose pretty damn quick. With AI code as good as it is, chances are Claude (or most high-end LLMs) can build what I am thinking of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This has led to “feature creep” in everything I’m developing, to be honest. This agent, which you’re reading right now, was a simple Retell AI IVR agent just two weeks ago.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n This past week, I noticed something was happening as a result: I was stuck in a continuous development cycle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I’ve done this in my writing sometimes, too: where I will start with a solid plan, but then part of the way through decide to kick it up a notch, and it becomes something bigger than it was supposed to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This also adds considerable risk of something breaking along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Transitioning from “YOLO” to spec-driven development helped start to break that cycle. And while I had spent time at the end of sessions cleaning up code and checking for security holes, I wasn’t checking for regressions (for non dev’s, that’s when the current fix addresses the problem, but breaks something else).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Enter Kiro’s property-based testing (I am really not trying to hawk Amazon’s app\/IDE, it’s just what I’m using post-VSCode, ha<\/em>). That has ensured my bursts of over-creativity aren’t breaking something else. It’s also sped development up overall — I’m spending more time on usability bugs than functionality problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While I need to have some self-control myself, having something that adds a considerable amount of structure to the process is beneficial. There is no way I could have undertook this project vibe coding my way to a useable, functioning stateful agent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Plus, slowing down has allowed me to absorb (and learn) more. But even still, I catch myself going off on tangents during development, just because it is so <\/em>easy these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One thing I am posting here to keep myself honest and ensure I take some time to use<\/strong> Hal rather than develop<\/strong> him: I’ll share how I structured Hal and his functionalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to seeking comments and constructive criticism, it will also be nice to see how things change with time. I’m not sold on any particular functionality or method, so I am expecting a lot of tinkering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But this weekend is for getting things running and enjoying my work. Then the real work begins anew next week!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The one thing that using AI to code (or any involved task, for that matter) changes is your perception of when it’s time to stop. Time itself can decide whether something makes it in.<\/p>\n That’s not the case anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,14],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-development","tag-ai-assisted-development","tag-dev-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/halspeaks.cirruslyweather.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/halspeaks.cirruslyweather.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/halspeaks.cirruslyweather.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halspeaks.cirruslyweather.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halspeaks.cirruslyweather.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/halspeaks.cirruslyweather.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/halspeaks.cirruslyweather.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halspeaks.cirruslyweather.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halspeaks.cirruslyweather.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}