I'm going back to writing algorithms on paper.

This is the wrong take. If you keep “vibe” coding and end up with bad results you should probably question your ability.

It absolutely looks like AI psychosis.

I'm just wondering: you know what architecture you want to go to now and you have the tests... can't you just let Claude refactor it to the better architecture?

Also 1600 lines... didn't any agent reviewing the diffs point that out?

You're also adding a lot to claude.md, I dunno how much that file has grown but a big claude.md file with many instructions, I don't think the ai will be able to remember all those rules.

I'm just wondering: you know what architecture you want to go to now and you have the tests... can't you just let Claude refactor it to the better architecture?

Also 1600 lines... didn't any agent reviewing the diffs point that out?

You're also adding a lot to claude.md, I dunno how much that file has grown but a big claude.md file with many instructions, I don't think the ai will be able to remember all those rules

Greed really comes into play when using LLM's to write code, is so easy to say YES when this cool feature where 2 years ago would have taken a week, now is 1 day or even one prompt. The "Say no" skill that Steve Jobs said was important is gonna be needed on an minute by minute basis.

Vibe coding works great with test driven development. You can have AI write the tests as well, but you need to confirm yourself because it's lying all the time. AI coding is like when you first started out, it's copying random bits and pieces from the web into your code until it works... Good for one shots and proof of concept. But for any long living project I think you are better off rewriting it from scratch yourself. Abstractions let you work faster, especially when you have it all in your head.

So how are people writing the specifications for AI?

Do they write empty functions and let AI fill them in?

Or do they use some kind of specification language?

Are people designing those languages?

i try to write one portable shell script per day; using AI would take all the fun out of it, so i never started using it. i honestly find it ridiculous that anyone uses it to write code, it just doesn't make sense to me.

LLMs assist those of us who were apt to take blocks of code from StackOverflow, or wherever, to solve problems quickly and avoid as much of the aggravating and slow toil of trial and error as possible.

That trial and error process is still happening with a LLM, but much faster, and with instantaneous cross-references to various forms of documentation that I would be looking up myself otherwise. It produces code of a quality that is dependent on the engineer knowing what they want in the first place and prompting for it and refining its output correctly.

It's the exact same process of sculpting code that the majority of the industry was doing "by hand" prior to the release of LLMs, but faster, and the harnesses are only getting better. To "vibe code" is to prompt vaguely and ignore the quality of the output. You're coming to a forum full of professionals and essentially telling us that you're getting really frustrated with your Scratch project.

I don't know if you're trying to lead a charge or whatever but good luck with that. As a senior SWE, it is clear to me that this is the new paradigm until something better than LLMs comes along. My workflows and efficiency have been vastly improved. I will admit that I have never really been a "I made a SMTP server in 3k of Rust" kind of guy, though.