> It’s very time consuming and 80% of the time I end up wondering if it would’ve been quicker to just do it all by myself right from the start.
Yes, this. Every time I read these sort of step by step guides to getting the best results with coding agents it all just sounds like boatloads of work that erase the efficiency margins that AI is supposed to bring in the first place. And anecdotally, I've found that to be true in practice as well.
Not to say that AI isn't useful. But I think knowing when and where AI will be useful is a skill in and of itself.
At least for me, I can have five of these processes running at once. I can also use Deepresearch for generating the designs with a survey of literature. I can use NotebookLM to analyse the designs. And I use Sourcery, CodeRabbit, Codex and Codescene together to do code review.
It took me a long time to get there with custom cli tools and browser userscripts. The out of the box tooling is very limited unless you are willing to pay big £££s for Devin or Blitzy.
Yes, this. Every time I read these sort of step by step guides to getting the best results with coding agents it all just sounds like boatloads of work that erase the efficiency margins that AI is supposed to bring in the first place. And anecdotally, I've found that to be true in practice as well.
Not to say that AI isn't useful. But I think knowing when and where AI will be useful is a skill in and of itself.