You don't need documentation or the 3rd party memory systems. The code IS the documentation.
All this stuff is LLM rube goldberg machines. It just pollutes context.
I barely use AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md these days. And where they remain, it's super basic high level stuff.
I'm honestly still kicking myself in the ass on many projects where I did something similar to this. I kept tons of markdown docs and decision docs. Now those things are just causing problems because they got stale. Even after having sessions of reconciling documentation, the LLM just gets confused.
I partially agree, way too many people are cargo culting overly complex AI workflows with little empirical data. My framing is a bit different though, I consider code the spec and actually keep a decent amount of docs for higher level concepts. So far this is working well for me across Claud and Codex.
High level docs are fine and can be okay or I can see them as being helpful. I did say I'll keep an AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md. There also are SOME docs and sometimes the LLM makes the docs anyways. I'm not an absolutist, but I'm REALLY fucking tired of seeing these giant .md files, "decision" documents, more comments than code, etc.
It's a LOT of cargo-culting overly complex AI workflows. It's devs/engineers making rube goldberg machines.
Everyone is doing their own little rain dance and when it rains they say "see, I told you it works"
kaydub · · focus · HN ↗
All this stuff is LLM rube goldberg machines. It just pollutes context.
I barely use AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md these days. And where they remain, it's super basic high level stuff.
I'm honestly still kicking myself in the ass on many projects where I did something similar to this. I kept tons of markdown docs and decision docs. Now those things are just causing problems because they got stale. Even after having sessions of reconciling documentation, the LLM just gets confused.
ChimpWithHat · · focus · HN ↗
kaydub · · focus · HN ↗
It's a LOT of cargo-culting overly complex AI workflows. It's devs/engineers making rube goldberg machines.
Everyone is doing their own little rain dance and when it rains they say "see, I told you it works"