After experimenting with various approaches, I arrived at Power Coding (like Power Armor). This requires:

- small codebases (whole thing is injected into context)

- small, fast models (so it's realtime)

- a custom harness (cause everything I tried sucks, takes 10 seconds to load half my program into context instead of just doing it at startup lmao)

The result is interactive, realtime, doesn't break flow (no waiting for "AI compile", small models are very fast now), and most importantly: active, not passive.

I make many small changes. The changes are small, so small models can handle them. The changes are small, so my brain can handle them. I describe what I want, so I am driving. The mental model stays synced continuously.

Life is good.