Coding with LLMs in the summer of 2025 – an update

“Always be part of the loop by moving code by hand from your terminal to the LLM web interface: this guarantees that you follow every process. You are still the coder, but augmented.”

I agree with this, but this is why I use a CLI. You can pipe files instead of copying and pasting.

Yeah it is also a bit of a shibboleth: vibes coding, when I'm productive for the 80% case with Claude code, is about the LLM cranking for 10-20min. I'm instructing & automating the LLM on how to do its own context management, vs artisanally making every little decision.

Ex: Implementing a spec, responding to my review comments, adding wider unit tests, running a role play for usability testing, etc. The main time we do what he describes of manually copying into a web ide is occasionally for a better short use of a model, like only at the beginning of some plan generation, or debug from a bunch of context we have done manually. Like we recently solved some nasty GPU code race this way, using a careful mix of logs and distributed code. Most of our job is using Boring Tools to write Boring Code, even if the topic/area is neato: you do not want your codebase to work like an adventure for everything, so we invest in making it look boring.

I agree the other commenter said: I manage context as part of the skill, but by making the AI do it. Doing that by hand is like slowly handcoding assembly. Instead, I'm telling Claude Code to do it. Ex: Download and crawl some new dependency I'm using for some tricky topic, or read in my prompt template markdown for some task, or generate and self-maintain some plan.md with high-level rules on context I defined. This is the 80% case.

Maybe one of the disconnects is task latency vs throughput as trade-offs in human attention. If I need the LLM to get to the right answer faster, so the task is done faster, I have to lean in more. But my time is valuable and I have a lot to do. If rather spend 50% less of my time per task, even if the task takes 4x longer, by the LLM spinning longer. In that saved human time, I can be working on another task: I typically have 2-3 terminals running Claude, so I only check in every 5-15min.

Your strategy only works for some domains.