alt Hacker NewsThanks for the video.
His fix for "the dumb zone" is the RPI Framework:
● RESEARCH. Don't code yet. Let the agent scan the files first. Docs lie. Code doesn't.
● PLAN. The agent writes a detailed step-by-step plan. You review and approve the plan, not just the output. Dex calls this avoiding "outsourcing your thinking." The plan is where intent gets compressed before execution starts.
● IMPLEMENT. Execute in a fresh context window. The meta-principle he calls Frequent Intentional Compaction: don't let the chat run long. Ask the agent to summarize state, open a new chat with that summary, keep the model in the smart zone.
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How is that Plan strategy not "outsourcing your thinking" because that's exactly what it sounds like. AI does the heavy lifting and you are the editor.
> RESEARCH. Don't code yet. Let the agent scan the files first. Docs lie. Code doesn't.
I find myself often running validity checks between docs and code and addressing gaps as they appear to ensure the docs don’t actually lie.
That's fascinating: that is identical to the workflow I've landed on myself.
More recently I've been doing the implement phase without resetting the whole context when context is still < 60% full and must say I find it to be a better workflow in many cases (depends a bit on the size of the plan I suppose.)
It's faster because it has already read most relevant files, still has the caveats / discussion from the research phase in its context window, etc.
With the context clear the plan may be good / thorough but I've had one too many times that key choices from the research phase didn't persist because halfway through implementation Opus runs into an issue and says "You know what? I know a simpler solution." and continues down a path I explicitly voted down.