[byproxy]

Yep, this, so far, proven the most promising use of LLMs, to me. I've read about people's Rube Goldberg machine-eqsue setups for getting agentic LLMs to work for them, but I find simply having a dialectic with an LLM to be more fruitful. Rubber-ducking with a duck that quacks back.

[magicpin]

How do you prevent it from just taking the reins and writing an entire function or class for you when all you wanted to do was just talk about the code you already had.

[lanyard-textile]

"No coding. (Explain|Debug|Analyze|Talk through) this with me:"

"Talk with me first:" (Implying anything other than talking, like coding, would be a separate distinct step that is not to be done)

Proposal is the best keyword imo if it fits what you'd like.

"Propose changes you would make to (this repo|staged changes|latest commit)."

"Propose alternatives."

"Propose flaws." / "Propose flaws in my reasoning."

[LatencyKills]

I keep Claude in "planning mode" (shift+tab) so it cannot touch my codebase.

[sgc]

"Do not write any code ..." If you are using LLMs for highly restricted work, it is rather trivial to keep them in check enough to receive useful responses.

[FajitaNachos]

You tell it to only talk about the code you already had.

[fzzzy]

You don't turn on editing mode.