When your coding agent outruns your understanding, make it explain the app before building more
brandon_galang · x · 2026-11-15
brandongalang shares a practical coding-agent tip: once your agent keeps adding features long after you've lost track of how your own app works, stop asking it to build and start asking it to explain.
Suggested prompt: "explain this to me as if I'm the product manager and you're the tech lead. What are the basic things I need to understand about what we're doing?" The bar: you should be able to explain at a high level what the app does and how the main pieces fit together. If you can't, have that conversation before adding more — otherwise every change pulls you deeper into a system you already don't understand.
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