I wonder if the problem of idle time / waiting / breaking flow is a function of the slowness. That would be simple to test, because there are super fast 1000 tok/s providers now.

(Waiting for Cerebras coding plan to stop being sold out ;)

I've used them for smaller tasks (making small edits), and the "realtime" aspect of it does provide a qualitative difference. It stops being async and becomes interactive.

A sufficient shift in quantity produces a phase shift in quality.

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That said, the main issue I find with agentic is my mental model getting desynchronized. No matter how fast the models get, it takes a fixed amount of time for me to catch up and understand what they've done.

The most enjoyable way I've found of staying synced is to stay in the driver's seat, and to command many small rapid edits manually. (i.e. I have my own homebrew "agent" that's just a loop of, I prompt it, it proposes edits, I accept or edit, repeat.)

So then the "synchronization" of the mental state is happening continuously, because there is no opportunity for desynchronization. Because you are the one driving. I call that approach semi-auto, or Power Coding (akin to Power Armor, which is wielded manually but greatly enhances speed and strength).