Thread

1. fishfasell · 1789905692 · focus · HN ↗

   I think there's a lot of setup and context required for an AI agent to consistently write good code. Once the agent has these guard rails in place I usually get great quality- far better than what I would write in most cases.

   I think where things get dicey is being able to write in any language. I write and review code in many languages and frameworks I'm not fluent in, so it's hard for me to distinguish between working code and great code. I can spot when the fundamental logic is wrong, but when it comes to "best fit" choices I'm clueless.

   1. kuczmama · 1789907139 · focus · HN ↗

      I'm curious as to what guardrails you've tried.

      This is something I have been trying to get right as well. I've attempted to use lots of linting and things like strong typing, duplicate checks, cyclomatic complexity, and robust tests. However, I still happen to find issues, which requires me to look at the code (at least at a high level)

      For example, I can say "Don't repeat yourself, and don't re-write helper functions" and I will even have a duplicate linter check, but inevitably the LLM will always want to re-write a similar yet slightly different helper function. Like it will always want to re-write something small like a trim() or a toString() function in every file.

      1. esprehn · 1789907419 · focus · HN ↗

         Have you tried something like "Always consult the utils/ package before writing helper functions. When adding a new generic helper function justify it in your design or PR description."

         I have better luck telling it positive things rather than lots of "never do X" style things.

         1. kuczmama · 1789908385 · focus · HN ↗

            That's a good idea to give more positive instructions as opposed to negative instructions. I think you've stated it well, I suppose the problem with negative instructions is that the LLM doesn't know what to do instead.

            "Never re-write a helper function" vs "Always search for helper functions before writing one" the "never... " one doesn't tell the LLM what to do, so it would have to make the logical leap from not re-writing to knowing that it should search. While it's a minor leap to make in isolation, I suppose stacking many negative rules in an AGENTS.md would assume that every time it will always make that logical conclusion on what to do.

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