Agentic Development on Coderrob

Agentic Development and the Review-Centric Workflow

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 -0500

AI is going to change software teams whether we pretend to be ready or not.

The lazy version of that change is simple: give everyone an agent, tell them to go faster, and hope review catches whatever falls out the other side.

That is not a strategy.

The better version is this:

Move humans closer to design and review, then let agents help execute well-defined units of work.

That does not mean developers stop being technical. It means the team’s technical energy shifts toward architecture, decomposition, design patterns, refactoring, review, verification, and shared understanding.

Fast Is Slow When You're Neck Deep in AI Slop

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:00:00 -0500

The Pattern Nobody Wants to Talk About

I’ve seen a distinct pattern where AI slows down software development.

I know. Heresy. But hear me out.

Agents are fast, but in the old saying kind of way:

Fast is slow, and slow is fast.

People push back on this. “Humans are faster,” they say.

Honestly? I doubt that’s true either.

What I believe is that most people are single-threaded. One brain, one task, one context.

Announcing ESLint Zero-Tolerance AI Anti-Slop Rules

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 10:00:00 -0600

AI-assisted development has a trust problem.

Generated code can look polished, type-safe, and reviewable while still smuggling in shortcuts that quietly erode a codebase over time. The faster teams move with agents, the more those shortcuts compound.

ESLint Zero-Tolerance is my attempt to put hard boundaries around those patterns in TypeScript projects: not as abstract guidance, but as enforceable rules and presets that make low-trust code harder to ship.

The Announcement

I’ve published the ESLint Zero-Tolerance AI anti-slop rules here:

Reverse Engineering Agentic Workflows from Copilot Debug Logs

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 09:00:00 -0500

Here’s a secret weapon for building your own agentic workflows: GitHub Copilot Chat’s debug logs.

You know how everyone’s out there wrestling with hallucinating AI agents? Trying to figure out how to structure those prompts, which tools to call when, how to handle errors without pulling your hair out, what context to pass between steps…

The answer?

It’s sitting right there in your Copilot Chat debug view. Already solved. Already tested. Already proven to work for your specific use cases.

The UI of AI is CLI

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 05:00:00 -0500

We spent decades trying to make computers easier to use. We went from punch cards to command lines to graphical user interfaces to touch screens. We added buttons, menus, icons, gestures, or really anything to avoid making people type commands into a terminal.

And now? Now we’re instructing AI to use… command lines.

Plot twist of the century, right there.

The Great UI Circle of Life

Here’s the evolution in a nutshell:

Planning the Planning: The Agentic Software Development Paradox

Tue, 21 Oct 2025 10:00:00 -0500

You know what’s wild about working with AI agents to build software? The planning. Oh boy, the planning.

Not just a plan - that would be too simple. No, no. We’re talking about:

Creating a planning document
Planning the planning (because that first plan will encounter the enemy)
Planning the planning of the planning (we need to go deeper)
Having an agent review the plan to identify any planning not planned in the plan
Having another agent revise the plan after being told to plan the planning based on the planning and the current implementation

It’s like Inception, but instead of dreams within dreams, it’s plans within plans within plans. Plan-ception, if you will.

Today, I Introduced the Interns to Dogfooding

Wed, 21 Aug 2024 20:47:54 -0500

Today, I got to introduce the AI interns to new topics like dogfooding*, cyclomatic complexity, BEM, JSON:API, and why interfaces are so useful. It was great to nerd out with them! Their excitement was contagious, and I was impressed to learn their code review for the chatbot was their first time working with React and web development.

Seeing that “aha!” moment when they first create something—there’s nothing like it.

For you Gen Z and Alphas: “dogfooding” means using your own product, just like your users do, so you feel the same issues and can fix them. It’s like making sure the dog food you’re serving is good—because you’re eating it too**!

** Don’t eat dog food - unless it’s a biscuit, I guess, but you do you.

Embracing Multi-Model Approaches for Enhanced Workflow Efficiency

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 22:09:29 -0500

Leveraging multiple models can significantly streamline the software development process. Here’s a strategy to consider:

Requirement Analysis: Use one model to gather user requirements.
Edge Case Identification: Deploy another model to spot edge cases while drafting the requirements document.
Code Instruction: Utilize a code generation model to create detailed how-to guides.
Language-Specific Models: Pass the how-to guide to a model specialized in the relevant programming language.

By creating a self-referencing workflow of requests and responses, you can enhance accuracy and efficiency. Ensure your code includes both positive and negative unit tests, runs them, and identifies issues with self- corrections.