> Mostly I just nudge it along. "Did you think about X? What about Y? Let's test Z"
Exactly - you need to constantly have your sceptics glasses on and you need to be exacting in terms of the structure you want things to follow. Having and enforcing "taste" is important and you need to be willing to spend time on that phase because the quality of the payoff entirely depends on it.
I recently planned for a major refactor. The discussion with claude went on for almost two days. The actual implementation was done in 10 minutes. It probably has made some mistakes that I will have to check for during the review but given that the level of detail that plan document had, it is certainly 90-95% there. After pouring-in of that much opinion, it is a fairly good representation of what I would have written while still being faster than me doing everything by hand.
In my experience you need exactly what you said, and I would add that he probably would have spent half day to do the refactoring himself and it would be sure he did right.
I don't think you have to know the answer. If the person you replied to knew the answer, there wouldn't have been a big, lengthy discussion.
But yes, being an expert in the problem domain helps. Or at least knowing enough to know what the right questions are and what plausible answers look like.
I just had a similar situation where an hour or two of conversation turned into a five-minute robot coding task. The problem required a solution and the number of possible solutions is vast, but that list can be refined, and then once the course of action is set, sometimes the course itself isn't all that complicated.
Exactly - you need to constantly have your sceptics glasses on and you need to be exacting in terms of the structure you want things to follow. Having and enforcing "taste" is important and you need to be willing to spend time on that phase because the quality of the payoff entirely depends on it.
I recently planned for a major refactor. The discussion with claude went on for almost two days. The actual implementation was done in 10 minutes. It probably has made some mistakes that I will have to check for during the review but given that the level of detail that plan document had, it is certainly 90-95% there. After pouring-in of that much opinion, it is a fairly good representation of what I would have written while still being faster than me doing everything by hand.