Re:Ask HN: How do you maintain depth of understanding and ve...
by civicsquid on Tuesday September 29, 2026 @08:10PM
(#49902630)
I like this, it feels like the right balance. I still struggle to define when the handoff point is, but I think maybe it's at the same point as when I would hand it off to a junior engineer: when I've sketched almost everything I need to be quite confident in my approach (and if I'm wrong, I'll find out and try again).
Instead of prompting, I hack on code in my editor.
My harness gather everything it needs from the local context - my git diff, my open editor buffers, etc. to assess what I've been doing. No chat. This is fed into phase 2 which tries to guess my intent. Then phase 3, it presents a plan to complete the work. The only user interaction is reviewing the plan and typing yes or no.
The quality of the plan of course depends on the quality of my uncommitted ideas. As it should be. If the plan goes off the rails, it's my fault. Do not chat your way to a solution! Abort the session and continue fleshing out the idea in source code/markdown.
The reason I like this is it forces me to at least take a stab at the work. I treat the AI like a relief pitcher to come in and close out the game.
I can't say this is the way to hyper productivity. I'm still slow. But at least I'm spending exactly 0 hours a day arguing with an LLM!