The current project I am developing with AI is so bloated that I've spent more time and tokens cleaning up the repo (to the tune of tens of thousands of lines removed) than actually creating it in the first place. AI is very very happy to create a mess.
My experience exactly. I think we’re doing great, but about 3 weeks in I realized it’s an unworkable mess that keeps breaking, and I spend the next two weeks cleaning it up or rebuilding it
As few people have mentioned you have to guide the AI to clean up stuff, it doesn't seem to choose that on its own. If prompted it can come up with a lot of things to clean up.