Blog / Development
July 21, 2026
Something interesting I'm noticing about the building process: a lot of it is coaching and guiding these advanced models to do what you need.
The human in the loop is more essential than ever. LLMs will try to get off track. If they don't have explicit instructions, they wander and go off path. Even with explicit instructions, they often still wander.
So the real skill becomes finding tasks the agent is worthy of committing to.
Planning is key. You can still build iteratively, and that is still faster than handwriting code. But having a robust plan that is well thought out and instructional is so valuable.
A vague plan gives the model room to invent scope. A clear plan gives it rails. Acceptance criteria, constraints, what "done" looks like, and what not to touch. That is the difference between an agent that executes and one that politely drifts.
Not every task is a good handoff. Bounded changes with clear outcomes are a great fit. Ambiguous product decisions, fuzzy architecture, and anything where success is hard to define are not. Hand those over too early and you don't save time. You just get faster drift.
The leverage isn't replacing the builder. It's compressing the distance between intent and implementation, as long as someone stays in the loop watching for the moment it starts to leave the path.