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14 changes: 7 additions & 7 deletions src/routes/posts/agentic_ai_yak_shaving_on_steroids.mdx
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Expand Up @@ -11,29 +11,29 @@ tags:
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import yak_shaving from "@/assets/yak_shaving.jpeg";

I've been playing around with agnetic AI for a side project recently, and I can absolutely see a world where the workflow is like this:
I've been playing around with agentic AI for a side project recently, and I can absolutely see a world where the workflow is like this:

1. I have an iterative session with an AI to define a feature - the outcome of this is an AI generated brief
2. The AI goes off and implements the feature, unsupervised, the outcome of this is a pull request.
3. I review the pull request - what I'm looking for is a cursory look over of the code to check that the patterns are holding, and brief manual verification that the feature is working.
3. I review the pull request - what I'm looking for is a cursory look over the code to check that the patterns are holding, and brief manual verification that the feature is working.

_This is not my current workflow_ - that step 2. I have to supervise - because the AI goes off into rabbit holes and burns all my tokens and creates some messes.

But this worfklow seems tantalisingly in reach - whether that's all a fugazi is a different story.
But this workflow seems tantalisingly in reach - whether that's all a fugazi is a different story.

I have limited time. I work a full time job, and I have a four-year old and two four-month old babies, and I need to exercise. So with my side project, of which I'm about 40 hours in, in, I could spend my limited time chipping away at building new features, or I could spend it:
I have limited time. I work a full time job, and I have a four-year old and two four-month old babies, and I need to exercise. So with my side project, of which I'm about 40 hours in, I could spend my limited time chipping away at building new features, or I could spend it:

- Optimising my prompts
- Adding lint rules and other guard rail test scripts
- Adding generation scripts

All in the hope that at the end of that the end of it, in some future world - creating this application will be a delightful breeze - I'll be able to to informally have a chat session with an AI, creating a list of features I want to see, and then come back the next night to review and merge the code it has created.
All in the hope that at the end of it, in some future world - creating this application will be a delightful breeze - I'll be able to informally have a chat session with an AI, creating a list of features I want to see, and then come back the next night to review and merge the code it has created.

<img src ={yak_shaving.src} alt="ai generated image. A man is scoffing some pills while holding some shears. In the background are some yaks. The man is saying 'gonna go shave me some yaks'" className="blog-image" style={{height: 400, display: "block", margin: "40px auto"}}/>


This is feels like yak-shaving. Perhaps this is another bit of software engineering wisdom that is disrupted by AI.
This feels like yak-shaving. Perhaps this is another bit of software engineering wisdom that is disrupted by AI.

The AI maximimalist might argue that - 'This isn't yak shaving - this is what the job is now, you're not building products, you're building a factory that builds products'.
The AI maximalist might argue that - 'This isn't yak shaving - this is what the job is now, you're not building products, you're building a factory that builds products'.

This might be a reasonable statement for a project at a high level of AI maturity - but there is an awkward transition as you move from a conventional software delivery model to this mature AI driven one.
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