I previously let an AI agent build an entire social media site in one day. It worked, but then it introduced a bug that neither I nor the agent could fix because I had no idea what the code did.

Now I want to rebuild it. I want to use AI again, but this time as an assistant – I’ll review every change, write tests together, and keep a clear plan.

Which AI tool would you recommend for this hybrid approach? How do you structure prompts to force the agent to explain before coding?

Also, do you think a couple of weeks is realistic to rebuild the site that has feature parity with Lemmy and a few extra features that the AI managed to build in a single day? Should I switch to a more manual approach with the agent only for boilerplate?

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!

  • Skullgrid@lemmy.world
    3·
    6 hours ago

    Actually think through the design of your program. Have an architectural plan in place. Have the behaviours and interactions planned out in advance. Write the code patterns as examples yourself.

    Consult the AI as a pair programmer after you feed the hard work you did to cover the gaps in your knowledge. VERIFY THE FUCKING SHIT IT SAYS IN THE ACTUAL FUCKING DOCUMENTATION OF THE CODE YOU ARE RUNNING. You should not put random code you find online into your terminal, because that’s how you get rm -r /ed in the face. Same thing here. The AI is no different. It’s not magic, if you don’t know what the fuck you are doing, the AI snippets aren’t going to make you know how to do it, UNLESS you corroborate the information.

    Also, why clone wholesale instead of just forking or joining the actual project? If you hate the communists of lemmy.ml, piefed also exists, and if you’re a nazi, there’s a similar right wing project that spun off back when people were mad at the asian woman in charge of reddit.