Devs say LLMs are over-optimized for one-shot answers and refuse to ask for feedback mid-task

Elijah_Meeks · x · 2026-09-03

A developer complaint is resonating: models are poor at soliciting user feedback mid-task, which makes them worse at their job. The author has to painstakingly prompt LLMs to work in batches and hand over judgment lists at each step — and they comply reluctantly.

Elijah Meeks extends the point: models are severely over-optimized to one-shot everything (even via massive fanouts and a thousand turns) because it demos well to PMs and leadership. The thread argues agent UX is shaped by sales optics at the expense of genuine human-in-the-loop collaboration.

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