Context is the bottleneck for coding agents now

(runnercode.com)

196 points zmccormick7 | 1 comments | 26 Sep 25 15:06 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

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bhu8 ◴[26 Sep 25 15:16 UTC] No.45387487[source]▶

IMHO, jumping from Level 2 to Level 5 is a matter of:

- Better structured codebases - we need hierarchical codebases with minimal depth, maximal orthogonality and reasonable width. Think microservices.

- Better documentation - most code documentations are not built to handle updates. We need a proper graph structure with few sources of truth that get propagated downstream. Again, some optimal sort of hierarchy is crucial here.

At this point, I really don't think that we necessarily need better agents.

Setup your codebase optimally, spin up 5-10 instances of gpt-5-codex-high for each issue/feature/refactor (pick the best according to some criteria) and your life will go smoothly

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perplex ◴[26 Sep 25 15:36 UTC] No.45387717[source]▶

>>45387487 #

I've been using claude on two codebases, one with good layering and clean examples, the other not so much. I get better output from the LLM with good context and clean examples and documentation. Not surprising that clarity in code benefits both humans and machines.

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1. daxfohl ◴[26 Sep 25 16:48 UTC] No.45388535[source]▶

>>45387717 #

I think there will be a couple benefits of using agents soon. Should result in a more consistent codebase, which will make patterns easier to see and work with, and also less reinventing the wheel. Also migrations should be way faster both within and across teams, so a lot less struggling with maintaining two ways of doing something for years, which again leads to simpler and more consistent code. Finally the increased speed should lead to more serializability of feature additions, so fewer problems trying to coordinate changes happening in parallel, conflicts, redundancies, etc.

I imagine over time we'll restructure the way we work to take advantage of these opportunities and get a self-reinforcing productivity boost that makes things much simpler, though agents aren't quite capable enough for that breakthrough yet.

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