> It's cheaper but not cheap

It's quite cheap if you consider developer time. But it's only as cheap as you can effectively drive the model, otherwise you are just wasting tokens on garbage code.

> LLM becomes a helpful tool but requires a ton of guidance

I think this is always going to be the case. You are driving the agent like you drive a bike, it'll get you there but you need to be mindful of the clueless kid crossing your path.

For some projects I had good results just letting the agent loose. For others I'd have to make the tasks more specific and granular before offloading to the LLM. I see nothing wrong with it.