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Coding with LLMs in the summer of 2025 – an update

(antirez.com)
600 points antirez | 1 comments | 20 Jul 25 11:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source
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nlh ◴[20 Jul 25 14:30 UTC] No.44625561[source]▶
Can anyone recommend a workflow / tools that accomplishes a slightly more augmented version of antirez’ workflow & suggestions minus the copy-pasting?

I am on board to agree that pure LLM + pure original full code as context is the best path at the moment, but I’d love to be able to use some shortcuts like quickly applying changes, checkpoints, etc.

My persistent (and not unfounded?) worry is that all the major tools & plugins (Cursor, Cline/Roo) all play games with their own sub-prompts and context “efficiency”.

What’s the purest solution?

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1. senko ◴[21 Jul 25 07:30 UTC] No.44632623[source]▶
I use the agent panel in my editor of choice (Zed).

For each task I always start with a new (empty) context and manually tag relevant files to include (this is trivial since I know the codebase well).

First I use Claude 4 Sonnet in thinking mode (I could also use Gemini 2.5 Pro or Opus as per antirez' recommendations) to come up with a detailed plan on how to implement something (research/planning phase). I provide feedback and we iterate on the plan.

Then, in the same conversation I switch to Sonnet 4 non-thinking and tell it to implement what we just devised.

I manually review the changes and trst them. If something needs fixing or (more often) if I notice I missed some edge case/caveat, I tell it to do that (still same convo).

Commit, clear convo, next task.

For research that isn't directly tied to the code, I use ChatGPT or Claude (web apps) to brainstorm ideas, and sometimes copy/pasre these into the editor agent as starting point.