Working with Codex
Planning prompts
I want to enable custom, unobtrusive update notifications and installs by customizing SPUUserDriver. Let’s start by planning the custom UI we’ll need. We’ll ONLY work on UI. Create a plan for creating SwiftUI views that can show the various states that are required by SPUUserDriver. I think the best place for these to show up is in the macOS window titlebars on the top-right. Create a plan to put it there. Consult the oracle.
- “Consult the oracle” kicks an agent into a “deeper thinking” mode which often produces better results
- Starts with a plan because he doesn’t know what the feature should look like and do yet and he won’t get a lot of value out of sending an agent off to write a bunch of code initially
- The plan is saved to a file like spec.md and often included as context in future conversations
- Uses AI for inspiration
- Getting from 0 to 1 is hard and is like staring at a blank slate
- Use the AI to give you something … anything
- Often the first iteration is thrown away
- Sometimes he does the work manually
- Almost always he has a better sense of what he wants after working with it
- Be able to tell when the agent is producing junk
- Review everything and for stuff that isn’t understood he will try to learn about it
- He learns in parallel with the agent (doesn’t walk away after a green bar)
Links
- Vibing a Non-Trivial Ghostty Feature: Mitchell Hashimoto vibe codes an update feature in ghostty