LLMs can’t read your mind, so be specific. Provide file paths, reference documents when needed. Don’t assume the LLM just knows every detail about whatever 3rd party API you work with, tell it to fetch and read the docs from the internet (yes this is a normal thing to ask an LLM to do).

It’s not magic (it will sometimes feel that way, either because your problem was simple or you got lucky). Prompting is a skill, and it feels a bit ridiculous to say that, but I’ve seen people interact with LLMs and it’s so cringey.

If your last experience with AI was GPT 4 or Gemini 2.5 (or worse, whatever default model the platform gave you), it’s time to give it a second chance.

In time I think you’ll discover how AI can help you, but I’ve seen a many people I’ve looked up to on this platform have similar experiences to you and immediately see the limitations while having a harder time identifying the opportunities.

If you just want a CRUD app you can get a CRUD app. If you want a UI form you can get a UI form, In many cases AI will outperform the human with very little iteration needed. But unless I’m mistaken those aren’t your use cases.

Given your experience I think AI will be less immediately useful. If the details are highly important, if something has to look a certain way or an effect has to be just so, that’s still very much a human activity.

It’s being able to code in the terminal - an immersive experience. Rather than AI being delegated to a panel, it is the OS. (start with a ! and you can run bash commands from Claude). Follow the AI ‘thinking’ stream of consciousness and be ready to step in as needed.

Also, always paste file paths. It can usually follow along with ‘the file I just edited’ but you’ll have better results being more explicit.

I don’t think that’s the pitch, or at least it never has been for me. Perhaps if you’re strictly vibe coding. I always keep VSCode open to keep track of the current diff from the last commit to ensure nothing unexpected is happening.

Unpopular opinion , but I agree. I use Pro for side projects, use Sonnet to plan and Haiku to implement- which goes a long way. When I get the session limit it’s a nudge that I’ve been at it too long and also that perhaps my approach was flawed in the first place.

For real. They went from losing series against bad teams to 4 in a row - including the wildest ending to a game that I’ve ever seen.
Don’t give up now. Chapman back. Adames heating up. Devers not even warm yet. One of the best pitching staffs we’ve ever had.

only now i can apply it to nearly every aspect of the job, not just writing code.

not sure if you meant it this way, but as an ADHD dev who has struggled in modern development teams with constant slack notifications, and an emphasis on process and producing docs, AI has been an absolute game changer in bringing back the quick iteration cycle that made me love coding to begin with

So much this. Writing code is the easy part of my job.

I identify with this so much.