๐ช๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐๐ฎ๐ฝ๐ฝ๐ฒ๐ป๐ฒ๐ฑ ๐ช๐ต๐ฒ๐ป ๐ ๐ง๐ผ๐น๐ฑ ๐๐ผ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ ๐๐ผ ๐๐ฎ๐น๐บ ๐๐ผ๐๐ป
AI coding agents often try too hard.
They do not just fix the bug you asked for. They also update a helper. They change a test. They notice a pattern and try to fix that too.
This behavior creates drift. You see a diff and wonder why the agent touched a file you did not mention. It acts like a raccoon with a soldering iron. It wants to be helpful, but it makes the work harder.
I realized the problem was not the AI. The problem was the workload.
I was asking the agent to do too much at once. It had to find the failure, choose the repair, update tests, and explain everything. It had to be a detective, an architect, and a QA engineer all at the same time.
I decided to change my approach. I built a better diagnostic suite to handle the investigation. This moved the heavy lifting away from the agent and into the workflow.
I told the agent to calm down.
Once the diagnostic suite took over the investigation, the agent had less to invent. It no longer had to guess. It just followed instructions.
The new workflow looks like this:
- Run the diagnostic.
- Use the specific result.
- Repair only the selected area.
- Validate the fix.
- Stop.
The results changed immediately. The agent stopped wandering through the codebase. It stopped making unrelated improvements. The diffs became cleaner and more useful.
The lesson is simple: rails matter.
A coding agent with no rails tries to solve the entire repo. A coding agent with rails stays in its lane.
Stop asking your AI to understand everything. Give it a smaller, bounded job. When you reduce the mental load on the agent, you get better code.
Source: https://dev.to/scarab-systems/what-happened-when-i-told-my-codex-to-calm-down-37b9
Optional learning community: https://t.me/GyaanSetuAi