> If you're writing enterprise code, it has to take into account so many things, explaining it all to the AI takes forever. Things like use the correct settings from IUserContext, add to the audit in the right place, use the existing utility functions from folder X, add json converters for this data structure, always use this different date encoding because someone made a mistake 10 years ago, etc.
The fix for this is... documentation. All of these need to be documented in a place that's accessible to the agent. That's it.
I've just about one-shotted UI features with Claude just by giving it a screenshot of the Figma design (couldn't be bothered with the MCP) and the ticket about the feature.
It used our very custom front-end components correctly, used the correct testing library, wrote playwright tests and everything. Took me maybe 30 minutes from first prompt to PR.
If I (a backend programmer) had to do it, it would've taken me about a day of trying different things to see which one of the 42 different ways of doing it worked.
I talk about why that doesn't work the line after you've quoted. Everyone's having problems with context windows and CC/etc. rapidly forgetting instructions.
I'm fullstack, I use AI for FE too. They've been able to do the screenshot trick for over a year now. I know it's pretty good at making a page, but the code is usually rubbish and you'll have a bunch of totally unnecessary useEffect, useMemo and styling in that page that it's picked up from its training data. Do you have any idea what all the useEffect() and useMemo() it's littered all over your new page do? I can guarantee almost all of them are wrong or unnecessary.
I use that page you one-shotted as a starting point, it's not production-grade code. The final thing will look nothing like it. Good for solving the blank page problem for me though.
React is hard even for humans to understand :) In my case the LLM can actually make something that works, even if it's ugly and inefficient. I can't do even that, my brain just doesn't speak React, all the overlapping effects and memos and whatever else magic just fries my brain.
That matches my experience with LLM-aided PRs - if you see a useEffect() with an obvious LLM line-comment above it, it's 95% going to be either unneccessary or buggy (e.g. too-broad dependencies which cause lots of unwanted recomputes).
> If you're writing enterprise code, it has to take into account so many things, explaining it all to the AI takes forever. Things like use the correct settings from IUserContext, add to the audit in the right place, use the existing utility functions from folder X, add json converters for this data structure, always use this different date encoding because someone made a mistake 10 years ago, etc.
The fix for this is... documentation. All of these need to be documented in a place that's accessible to the agent. That's it.
I've just about one-shotted UI features with Claude just by giving it a screenshot of the Figma design (couldn't be bothered with the MCP) and the ticket about the feature.
It used our very custom front-end components correctly, used the correct testing library, wrote playwright tests and everything. Took me maybe 30 minutes from first prompt to PR.
If I (a backend programmer) had to do it, it would've taken me about a day of trying different things to see which one of the 42 different ways of doing it worked.