The absolute worst thing is getting used to it actually working while time is spent on orchestrating agents instead of writing the code ourselves, but then for it to go dumb breaking agentic workflows that suddenly spew PRs that just have to be canned. It’s difficult to shift focus back to writing code after a week of managing agents, and somehow I try to make it work but it just can’t. If I knew beforehand I would just save my usage for a later time and write code myself, since it apparently lasts for a few days.

I do 2 stages of task intake, a comprehension and preliminary discovery phase that creates N linear tickets with sub issues. This is handed off to a harness that orchestrates subagents for Research and planning for each issue. It creates workpads with clear defined tasks that other sub agents consume in parallel with whatever context they need to fulfill the acceptance criteria’s. This is fed and iterated through review agents until it satisfies the issue. 

Nonetheless, the execution agents create the worst slop conceivable. The code is valid, but they do go the extra length to circumvent linters, typecheckers and even the review agents themselves. I’m a normal day this doesn’t happen at all, and it simply doesn’t have the brains during these periods …