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Dex Horthy says small tasks should skip heavy planning workflows

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Dex Horthy says the share of tasks that can be one-shot without strict process has grown, but alignment, grilling, and planning workflows still matter.

He argues that heavy planning on small tasks makes developers feel slower, and predicts tools will add escape hatches so humans or models can decide to ship directly.

He adds that as model capabilities improve, the "smart zone" has grown to roughly 200k–400k tokens, and HumanLayer is prototyping research-to-implement and research-to-short-design-to-implement workflows.

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@dexhorthy

Yeah the % of tasks that are one shottable without strict process has gone up, and also alignment/grilling/planning workflows are still important.

But if you’re using heavy planning to do small stuff you’re gonna feel slower

I predict more of these tools/skills will start to emphasize escape hatches for human or model to decide “oh wait this is small, let’s just go ship”

Esp as model capabilities improve me the “smart zone” gets a little bigger (line is closer to 200-400k now I think) at humanlayer we’ve been prototyping research-> implement or research -> short design -> implement workflows

Matt Pocock@mattpocockuk
Should you /grill-with-docs, /wayfinder, or just one shot the code? 1. If the diff is tiny, DON'T grill /grill-with-docs saves you from situations where the agent built the wrong thing. But if the thing it's building is tiny, that cost drops to nothing. So one-shotting is absolutely fine when you're only making small changes. 2. Never start with /wayfinder A failure mode of /wayfinder is that you start grilling and the solution turns out to be way simpler than you thought. Why is this bad? Because you've created the map and tickets, and you realise you don't need them. So if the expected diff is medium-large, always start with a /grill-with-docs session. Then, if planning starts to get out of hand, just say "/wayfinder let's turn this into a map".
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