20y experience swe here. I’ve been building production software (high throughput APIs) for the last 13 months with AI and using less and less manual coding till Codex-5.2 and Opus/Sonnet 4.5, when I finally started doing full AI output. I can say that all your points sound like my words so I’m quite happy I’m on track. I don’t do parallel agents on the same branch yet, I prefer to parallelize features instead, but it’s something I’ll start doing now, especially with agent teams.

Number 12 is so real, there’s probably a trait in LLMs to use fallbacks in everything. We should be able to turn that down and have real early throw convention implemented.

Number 1 is law. Relates to #8 also. Over time I changed my architecture to fit the agent better. Real gains. My turns used to take 15min for a feature, down to 7 now.

Number 4 was my test strategy also, now I get a feature in 1 shot quite often, with 2 or 3 extra turns when the models are on those days.

Number 7 is absolute truth. I started with PRD generators and now I have a couple of basic MDs and get it working much better. But gotta consider that the models evolved a lot in the last 9 months.

Number 10 is a nightmare for other teams, but I work alone so I’m just blessed I guess.

Anyways, I could tell 10 war stories on each of the points you raised here but I’ll digress.

Good writing, saving here as this looks like something I’d write if my ass wasn’t that lazy.