> People coding with LLMs today use agents. Agents get to poke around your codebase on their own. They author files directly. They run tools. They compile code, run tests, and iterate on the results. ...
Is this what people are really doing? Who is just turning AI loose to modify things as it sees fit? If I'm not directing the work, how does it even know what to do?
I've been subjected to forced LLM integration from management, and there are no "Agents" anywhere that I've seen.
Is anyone here doing this that can explain it?
I use Cursor by asking it exactly what I want and how I want it. By default, Cursor has access to the files I open, and it can reference other files using grep or by running specific commands. It can edit files.
It performs well in a fairly large codebase, mainly because I don’t let it write everything. I carefully designed the architecture and chose the patterns I wanted to follow. I also wrote a significant portion of the initial codebase myself and created detailed style guides for my teammates.
As a result, Cursor (or you can say models you selecting because cursor is just a router for commercial models) handles small, focused tasks quite well. I also review every piece of code it generates. It's particularly good at writing tests, which saves me time.