alt Hacker NewsI find working more asynchronous with the agents help. I've disabled the in-your-face agent-is-done/need-input notifications [1]. I work across a few different tasks at my own pace. It works quite well, and when/if I find a rhythm to it, it's absolutely less intense than normal programming.
You might think that the "constant" task switching is draining, but I don't switch that frequently. Often I keep the main focus on one task and use the waiting time to draft some related ideas/thoughts/next prompt. Or browse through the code for light review/understanding. It also helps to have one big/complex task and a few simpler things concurrently. And since the number of details required to keep "loaded" in your head per task is fewer, switching has less cost I think. You can also "reload" much quicker by simply chatting with the agent for a minute or two, if some detail have faded.
I think a key thing is to NOT chase after keeping the agents running at max efficiency. It's ok to let them be idle while you finish up what your doing. (perhaps bad of KV cache efficiency though - I'm not sure how long they keep the cache)
(And obviously you should run the agent in a sandbox to limit how many approvals you need to consider)
[1] I use the urgent-window hint to get a subtle hint of which workspace contain an agent ready for input.
EDIT: disclaimer - I'm relative new to using them, and have so far not used them for super complex tasks.
Replies
Yes, I briefly felt like I needed to keep agents busy but got over it. The point of having multiple things going on is so you have a another task to work on.
Yes, I follow the same sort of pattern, it took a while to convince myself that it was ok to leave the agent waiting, but it helps with the human context switching. I also try to stagger the agests, so one may be planning and designing, while another is coding, that way i can spend more time on the planning and designing ones and leave the coding one to get on with it.