alt Hacker News> The biggest thing AI enables is cheap code.
Agree, but in my experience that doesn't change much about the design doc.
I think it's helpful to the author to be able to say to an AI agent, "Hey, put together this quick prototype," and that informs the design doc. But if the goal is to review the design decisions with the team, I don't see how you get around the design doc. I don't want a teammate to send me 10 KLOC of AI-generated code and ask me to review the design. Even if you told AI to try 10 different ideas and pick the best, I don't trust AI to make the same decisions as my human teammates.
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Why do you need to review design decisions with a team anymore?
I get the impression that Fable, when well directed, is better than maybe 80% of SWEs. Maybe more.
[edit: Yes, I'm maybe baiting other users, but I want to know your honest opinions on this.]
I'm not suggesting using AI generated code as a proposed design.
I would try and get an understanding of design space by giving a good agent a high level goal and seeing what it does, then getting a summary of the approach.
When you do this several times, especially if you give it a steer on some non-functional requirement, you can compare and contrast different approaches.
The idea isn't to prototype so much as to gather information by doing. Prototype, to my mind, suggests other things; shortcuts, stubs, incompleteness. I would actually ask agents to do the whole thing, and find out the full scope. It can be particularly useful revealing side effects.
Pair it with code auditors wearing different hats, of course.