[all2]

I'm on my 5th draft of an essentially vibe-coded project. Maybe its because I'm using not-frontier models to do the coding, but I have to take two or three tries to get the shape of a thing just right. Drafting like this is something I do when I code by hand, as well. I have to implement a thing a few times before I begin to understand the domain I'm working in. Once I begin to understand the domain, the separation of concerns follows naturally, and so do the component APIs (and how those APIs hook together).

[the-grump]

My suggestions:

- like the sister comment says, use the best model available. For me that has been opus but YMMV. Some of my colleagues prefer the OAI models.

- iterate on the plan until it looks solid. This is where you should invest your time.

- Watch the model closely and make sure it writes tests first, checks that they fail, and only then proceeds to implementation

- the model should add pieces one by one, ensuring each step works before proceeding. Commit each step so you can easily retry if you need to. Each addition will involve a new plan that you go back and forth on until you're happy with it. The planning usually gets easier as the project moves along.

- this is sometimes controversial, but use the best language you can target. That can be Rust, Haskell, Erlang depending on the context. Strong types will make a big difference. They catch silly mistakes models are liable to make.

Cursor is great for trying out the different models. If opus is what you like, I have found Claude code to be better value, and personally I prefer the CLI to the vscode UI cursor builds on. It's not a panacea though. The CLI has its own issues like occasionally slowing to a crawl. It still gets the work done.

[all2]

My options are 1) pay about a dollar per query from a frontier model, or 2) pay a fraction of that for a not-so-great model that makes my token spend last days/weeks instead of hours.

I spend a lot of time on plans, but unfortunately the gotchas are in the weeds, especially when it comes to complex systems. I don't trust these models with even marginally complex, non-standard architectures (my projects center around statecharts right now, and the semantics around those can get hairy).

I git commit after each feature/bugfix, so we're on the same page here. If a feature is too big, or is made up of more than one "big" change, I chunk up the work and commit in small batches until the feature is complete.

I'm running golang for my projects right now. I can try a more strongly typed language, but that means learning a whole new language and its gotchas and architectural constraints.

Right now I use claude-code-router and Claude Code on top of openrouter, so swapping models is trivial. I use mostly Grok-4.1 Fast or Kimi 2.5. Both of these choke less than Anthropic's own Sonnet (which is still more expensive than the two alternatives).

[girvo]

> and personally I prefer the CLI to the vscode UI cursor builds on

So do I, but I also quite like Cursor's harness/approach to things.

Which is why their `agent` CLI is so handy! You can use cursor in any IDE/system now, exactly like claude code/codex cli

[chrispyfried]

When you say “iterate on the plan” are you suggesting to do that with the AI or on your own? For the former, have any tips/patterns to suggest?

[mistercow]

> Maybe its because I'm using not-frontier models to do the coding

IMO it’s probably that. The difference between where this was a a year ago and now is night and day, and not using frontier models is roughly like stepping back in time 6-12 months.