A bit bewildering but a small variation of this work: do a ton of experimental branches that you just don't merge.

It's amazing how the AI can learn from branches that ran up against a wall.

I don't think that you need to make wild iterations on the real product, just do it scratch space and 'merge the lessons not the code'

This whole 'design up front' never worked well because it baked in to many bad assumptions.

The experimental efforts help you work through those.

Once you've worked through it - toss them aside and then let the AI plan based on the scratch work.

The tangled stuff is in scratch space, that's what it's for.

And critically: it costs almost nothing.

The power of AI is not the 'nits and small bugs' - it's the firehose of scratch branches it can let loose in where it doesn't have to worry about PRs, reviews.

Once it's all figured out, then the path to the solution is actually relatively clear - and it can be 'planned out' and just done.