alt Hacker Newshi I’m the author of the post. I think that’s basically the distinction I’m trying to make.
Historically, plan mode served two different roles:
1. making the agent’s instructions precise enough to execute 2. helping the human understand what was about to happen
I think #1 is less necessary as agents get better. #2 is going the other direction, it becomes more important as the model is able to do more on its own because larger chunks of work are happening with increasing complexity.
Where I’ve changed my mind is the interface for #2. I increasingly think an interactive, iterative workflow is closer to how people actually build understanding than being handed a long generated document, especially one they didn’t author themselves.
The human-understanding problem is very real though
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Did you just invent "agile" maybe. ;)
Can't help but think "Doesn't matter if a machine or a human with (even slightly) different background wrote it", maximizing information flow is maximizing common assumptions and "culture" to only have to communicate a small set of current information for the task at hand. Being a team means having built a joint context so to say. This has always been the purpose of design documents and they always were too big or too small. Because you did not write them, but the others. If you only produce code you think they are the past and useless. If you iterate and your team grows, you start seeing the value in always current docs that are containing just what is not in your everyday culture.
All the best for you and your growing family. I had a similar experience recalibrating my values...
Awesome blog. You're a good writer. I enjoyed seeing your article on AI in 2018. Thank you for sharing your expertise.
Also I hope your delivery goes well. My wife (and co-founder) had a challenging delivery and it really put life in to perspective for both of us on a range of issues (how much women's pain is minimized in the health system requiring stronger personal advocacy than I would ever have expected).
As far as plan mode, I still find it essential in keeping agents on track. I build propelcode.app and have a variation on plan mode I still find useful, happy to trade notes on agentic coding if youre interested.