this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2025
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Programming
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But at a certain point, it seems like you spend more time babysitting and spoon-feeding the LLM than you do writing productive code.
There's a lot of busywork that I could see it being good for, like if you're asked to generate 100 test cases for an API with a bunch of tiny variations, but that kind of work is inherently low value. And in most cases you're probably better off using a tool designed for the job, like a fuzzer.
I've found it pretty effective to not babysit, but instead have the model iterate on it's instructions file. If it did something wrong or unexpected, I explain what I wanted it to do, and ask it to update it's project instructions to avoid the pitfall in future. It's more akin to calm and positive reinforcement.
Obviously YMMV. I am in charge of a large codebase of python cron automations, that interact with a handful of services and APIs. I've rolled a ~600 line instructions file, that has allowed me to pretty successfully use Claude to stand up from scratch full object-oriented clients, complete with dep injection, schema and contract data models, unit tests, etc.
I do end up having to make stylistic tweaks, and sometimes reinforce things like DRY, but I actually enjoy that part.
EDIT: Whenever I begin to feel like I'm babysitting, it's usually due to context pollution and the best course is to start a fresh agent session.