Applying the bitter lesson to my LLM workflow: skip agents, just talk to the model

esrtweet · x · 2026-11-09

Developer esrtweet explains why he deliberately keeps his LLM workflow primitive: no subagents, no accumulated skills, no unattended "software factory"—just conversing with the model to analyze and write code.

His reasoning: all these elaborate scaffolds are coping mechanisms for frontier models not yet being smart enough, and models keep improving. Rather than invest in procedures with a short half-life of usefulness, he applies Sutton's bitter lesson to his own workflow and saves his think time for actual problems.

Related event: Developers Embrace Minimalist AI Coding: Just Talk to the Model, Skip Agent Tricks(2 posts)→

Original post →

More from AGI Musings

AGI Musings channel →