<h1>Slop Paralysis</h1>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>slop paral­y­sis - noun</strong></p>
<p>A com­plete or par­tial loss of func­tion while re­view­ing the out­put of a cod­ing agent.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Let me paint you a pic­ture.</p>
<p>You have an idea for prod­uct.
It could be any­thing: A mo­bile app, a dash­board, or a script to au­to­mate your work.
So, you sit down with your fa­vorite <span class="small-caps">LLM</span> and de­scribe your idea.
Maybe you have a pretty good un­der­stand­ing of how it should be im­ple­mented.
You might even know the over­all struc­ture of the pro­ject in your mind.
You tell your cod­ing agent all of this.</p>
<p>Then, you let it loose.
It cooks and cleans and im­ple­ments your prod­uct for you.
In the end, you have <em>some</em> idea of how the end re­sult works, but it is not com­plete.
Since this is a pro­ject that is im­por­tant, which you in­tend to main­tain, you go to read the code.
That’s when it hits you.
<strong>Slop paral­y­sis</strong>.</p>
<h2>The Problem</h2>
<p>Slop paral­y­sis is the com­plete lack of de­sire to re­view the out­put of an LLM.
It could show up for any num­ber of rea­sons.
The most com­mon, for me, are:</p>
<ul>
<li>The sheer amount of code de­mand­ing con­sump­tion.</li>
<li>Missing con­text (that the agent was aware of, but not you).</li>
<li>A fear of break­ing some­thing.</li>
</ul>
<p>In the end, slop paral­y­sis slows you down and makes your life more stress­ful.
So, what can we do about it?</p>
<h2>Some Solutions</h2>
<p>I will de­scribe some so­lu­tions that have worked <em>for me</em>.
As al­ways, your mileage may vary.</p>
<p>The ob­vi­ous so­lu­tion is to sim­ply not use an agent.
Some­times cod­ing agents make your job eas­ier.
Some­times they do not.
<a href="./when_to_use_an_agent">Knowing which is which is dif­ﬁ­cult, but ex­tremely valu­able.</a></p>
<p>When you do de­cide to use an agent, you can have the agent sim­ply pro­duce less code.
I have heard of <a href="https://github.com/DietrichGebert/ponytail">pro­jects</a> that help you do this, but I have not ac­tu­ally tried them.
In­stead, I ask the agent to make a plan ﬁrst, then re­work that plan my­self to min­i­mize the num­ber of changes.
In the end, a plan which was orig­i­nally writ­ten by the agent be­comes one that has been mer­ci­lessly edited by my­self.
In this way, I min­i­mize the amount of code which de­mands con­sump­tion.
The side-ef­fect of this is that I then have an ex­cel­lent un­der­stand­ing of what the agent ac­tu­ally does, which helps with the con­text prob­lem.</p>
<p>The ﬁ­nal strat­egy, which I use when all else fails, is to refac­tor the code by hand.
When the agent has proven the tech­ni­cal fea­si­bil­ity of the pro­ject, but the code is sim­ply too ex­pan­sive to prop­erly grok all at once, I sit down with a ﬁne-tooth comb and refac­tor it, mod­ule by mod­ule.
I do not need to care­fully read each func­tion and eval­u­ate its mer­its, but I do force my­self to, at min­i­mum, lay eyes on them all.</p>
<h2>Stay Steady Out There</h2>
<p>I ﬁnd my­self be­com­ing more over­whelmed by the dis­course every sin­gle day.
It’s ex­haust­ing how much is hap­pen­ing in the world, and even worst, how much you are ex­pected to care about it all.
Take some time for your­self.
Save your­self from slop paral­y­sis.</p>

A complete or partial loss of function while reviewing the output of a coding agent.

<p>A com­plete or par­tial loss of func­tion while re­view­ing the out­put of a cod­ing agent.</p>

Slop Paralysis

<h1>Why I Talk to Myself</h1>
<img src="/images/bike_sidewalk.webp" alt="My bike broke down. Luckily, I had my camera">
<p>Each week I sit down and re­ﬂect on what I’ve learned. I think about which of my ef­forts have helped the Harper en­deavor, and which have harmed it. It’s not easy, but I think it’s one of the best habits I’ve built. More ac­cu­rately, it’s one of the best habits <a href="https://ma.tt">Matt</a> has en­cour­aged me to build.</p>
<p>When I re­ally think about it, I’m re­minded of the orig­i­nal <a href="https://blog.afterthedeadline.com/">After the Deadline blog</a>, which co­in­ci­den­tally also had a cat­e­gory called<span class="push-double"></span> <span class="pull-double">“</span>Talking to Myself”. I won­der if Raphael Mudge (AtD’s au­thor) had a sim­i­lar mo­ti­va­tion.</p>
<p>I talk to my­self to ﬁnd the weak­nesses in Harper’s mis­sion and fo­cus my at­ten­tion on what mat­ters. It is an ef­ﬁ­cient way to get from <a href="https://ma.tt/2025/05/sharing-levels/">layer one to layer ﬁve</a>. It can help get other main­tain­ers on the same page and build a body of knowl­edge that can be linked to from any­where.</p>
<p>Not wor­ry­ing about keep­ing in­for­ma­tion locked-down is one of the more beau­ti­ful parts of work­ing in pub­lic. Open source code would be noth­ing with­out sim­i­larly open source knowl­edge. I talk to my­self <em>on­line</em> so my users can un­der­stand my in­ten­tions.</p>
<p>In many senses, we are not un­like moths. We are drawn to the lights of dis­trac­tion, hype, and pro­cras­ti­na­tion. For me, set­ting up check­points to stop and re­ﬂect has been an ef­fec­tive de­ter­rent from these lights. In fact, I think each minute for which I stop and think has paid it­self back three times over in time sav­ings. If I can bet­ter al­lo­cate my time and en­ergy, I can avoid do­ing re­dun­dant work pur­su­ing point­less goals.</p>
<h2>Bonus Points</h2>
<p>A <a href="./markov_chains_are_the_original_language_models">few</a> of my <a href="./local-first_software_is_easier_to_scale">ar­ti­cles</a> have be­come pop­u­lar on sites like Hacker News and Reddit. We’ve got­ten quite a few Harper in­stal­la­tions from links on these ar­ti­cles. I would never rely on this kind of blog­ging as a source of ad­ver­tis­ing, but it is nice to see it help spread the word.</p>

It's not easy, but I think it's one of the best habits I've ever built.

<p>It’s not easy, but I think it’s one of the best habits I’ve ever built.</p>

Why I Talk to Myself

Back in my day, we used math for autocomplete.

<p>Back in my day, we used math for au­to­com­plete.</p>

Markov Chains Are the Original Language Models

<h1>Harper’s Testing Strategy</h1>
<p>After spend­ing a few days dis­cussing and learn­ing from Automattic’s Chief Quality Ofﬁcer (Lance Willet), I’ve pre­pared a ﬁrst draft of <a href="https://writewithharper.com/docs/contributors/testing-strategy">Harper’s test­ing strat­egy.</a>
I hope you all take a look. I am very in­ter­ested in any and all feed­back you may have.</p>

Elijah Potter

Harper’s Testing Strategy

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