Agreed. Projects like these tend to feel shortsighted.
Lately, I lean towards keeping a vanilla setup until I’m convinced the new thing will last beyond being a fad (and not subsumed by AI lab) or beyond being just for niche use cases.
For example, I still have never used worktrees and I barely use MCPs. But, skills, I love.
In my view an unappreciated benefit of the vanilla setup is you can get really accustomed to the model’s strengths and weaknesses. I don’t need a prompt to try to steer around these potholes when I can navigate on my own just fine. I love skills too because they can be out of the way until I decide to use them.
Yeah, anyone who’s used LLMs for a while would know that this conversation is a lost cause and the only option is to start fresh.
But, a common failure mode for those that are new to using LLMs, or use it very infrequently, is that they will try to salvage this conversation and continue it.
What they don’t understand is that this exchange has permanently rotted the context and will rear its head in ugly ways the longer the conversation goes.
I’ve found this happens with repos over time. Something convinces it that implementing the same bug over and over is a natural next step.
I’ve found keeping one session open and giving progressively less polite feedback when it makes that mistake it sometimes bumps it out of the local maxima.
Clearing the session doesn’t work because the poison fruit lives in the git checkout, not the session context.
I don't think it's intended as that kind of binary. It's more like "yeah, it's flawed in that way, and here's how you can get around that". If someone's claiming the tool is perfect, they're wrong; but if someone's repeatedly using it in the way that doesn't work and claiming the tool is useless, they're also wrong.
Nobody said that. But as you say, it's just a tool. Tools need to be used correctly. If tools are unintuitive, maybe that's due to the nature of the tool or due to a flaw in it's design. But either way, you as the user need to work around that if you want to get the maximum use out of the tool.
It is completely irresponsible to give an LLM direct access to a system. That was true before and remains true now. And unfortunately, that didn't stop people before and it still won't.
"Thinking: the user recognizes that it's impossible to guarantee elimination. Therefore, I can fulfill all initial requirements and proceed with striking it."
This is the essence of product development - creating objects that make you 'feel' something. I definitely feel something when reading through the chats in this interface vs another form.
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