Start simple and describe what you want

Just describe what you want. Get better at articulating your problem, and the solution you have in mind.

I used to use Firefox, with a bunch of extensions that I was happy with as they were “good enough”. I even built a few extensions for problems I couldn’t find a solution for. I used DevTools a lot to debug webapps I was working on.

I’ve now moved to Safari. Safari’s “Describe an extension” feature let me describe what I wanted, and it built an extension on of the fly, exactly for the problem I needed to solve. Nothing more, nothing less. No rug-pull or scary updates flowing in from the wild Internet. And Safari’s DevTools are “just enough”. It’s not the best browser but I find myself not caring about “best” anymore. Just older now I suppose?

I used to use Vim. I have a 1000+ line hand-written config from ~20y of usage, all the way back to writing C assignments in college and submitting them on SSH via custom Vim plugin. I’ve progressively added SublimeText and IntelliJ IDEA to my toolset and they were “good enough”. They were actually plenty enough.

I’ve now moved to just SublimeText. I ask an agent to build the commands I want, build the hotkeys I want. When described well, what I get are so good. Exactly what I need, “just enough”.

Happy and proud¶

I was so proud and happy when my Vim configs and shortcuts worked, back in college. None of my peers understood it (hi guys!), or cared about it, but it put a smile on my face. Do I still have those shortcuts and config? Nope. I threw it away a long long time ago. And that’s okay.

I build a lot more things, a lot faster now, with LLMs. I also throw away a lot more things now. It still puts a smile on my face, I’m still proud of the things I’m able to envision, articulate and build, and my peers/family still don’t understand my joy. And that’s okay.

Solutions and workarounds¶

My mom practices reading Hindu scriptures with her friends/cousins. To put them up in a comfortable format, and share on WhatsApp so they’re all on the same page, she used to sit with me to prepare such documents. It stays fun for like 10mins, and then it becomes a chore.

Now LLMs prepare what she needs much faster. She gets multiple options and she gets to pick which works best for her group.

We still sit together, directing the LLM together, agreeing on the best formats that work for her. Tuning them, obsessing over details, it’s much less of a chore now.

Before LLMs, when she approached me with this problem, my solution was to sit with her, type/code whatever she needs and format them as she prefers. Now, the solution is to get LLM to do most of the grunt work, with us directing it. If LLMs are down for some reason, typing it myself would still be possible, but would be seen as a workaround.

Written without any LLM help, so me and my kids can see, 10y later, what I wrote like in 2026.