It didn't work for me, and if you reading this, it probably won't work for you either.

It did­n’t work for me, and if you read­ing this, it prob­a­bly won’t work for you ei­ther.

Do Not Type Your Notes

<h1>Slop Paralysis</h1>
<blockquote>
slop paral­y­sis - noun
A com­plete or par­tial loss of func­tion while re­view­ing the out­put of a cod­ing agent.
</blockquote>
Let me paint you a pic­ture.
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 LLM 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.
Then, you let it loose.
It cooks and cleans and im­ple­ments your prod­uct for you.
In the end, you have some 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.
Slop paral­y­sis.
<h2>The Problem</h2>
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:
<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>
In the end, slop paral­y­sis slows you down and makes your life more stress­ful.
So, what can we do about it?
<h2>Some Solutions</h2>
I will de­scribe some so­lu­tions that have worked for me.
As al­ways, your mileage may vary.
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>
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.
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.
<h2>Stay Steady Out There</h2>
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.

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

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

Slop Paralysis

<h1>Hacker News, sans AI</h1>
I like Hacker News, but I do not love that so much of it has turned into dis­cus­sion of a sin­gle topic: AI. So, I have cre­ated my own ver­sion.
A ver­sion of Hacker News, with­out AI.
<a href="/hnsansai">HNSansAI</a> pulls from the of­ﬁ­cial Hacker News API, looks through the con­tent of each ar­ti­cle, and dis­cards any that men­tion a term re­lated to “AI”. That in­cludes stuff like:
<ul>
<li>“OpenAI”</li>
<li>“Anthropic”</li>
<li>“Copilot”</li>
<li>“LLM”</li>
<li>…and many more.</li>
</ul>

I like HackerNews, but I don't love that so much of it has turned into discussion of a single topic: AI. This is a version of HackerNews, filtered to remove any article focusing on __AI__. Refreshes about every ten minutes.

I like HackerNews, but I don’t love that so much of it has turned into dis­cus­sion of a sin­gle topic: AI. This is a ver­sion of HackerNews, ﬁl­tered to re­move any ar­ti­cle fo­cus­ing on AI. Refreshes about every ten min­utes.

Hacker News sans AI

<h1>Harper in the News</h1>
The biggest com­plaint about Harper is that the qual­ity of gram­mar check­ing still needs some work.
I’ve got an ex­cit­ing new pro­ject I’m prepar­ing to dis­cuss later this week (hopefully) in that area.
It should be a step-func­tion im­prove­ment over our pre­vi­ous meth­ods for cre­at­ing new rules.
In the mean­time, I’ve col­lected some re­cent sight­ings of Harper in the wild:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://obsidian.rocks/resource-harper/">Obsidian Rocks</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.wearefounders.uk/the-grammar-checker-that-actually-gets-developers-meet-harper/">We Are Founders</a></li>
<li><a href="https://itsfoss.com/harper-grammar-checker/">It’s FOSS</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.xda-developers.com/ditched-grammarly-for-this-amazing-open-source-alternative/">XDA Developers</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.maketecheasier.com/harper-vs-grammarly/">Make Tech Easier</a></li>
</ul>

I've got some exciting new work I'm preparing to discuss later this week (hopefully). In the meantime, I've collected some recent sightings of Harper in the wild.

I’ve got some ex­cit­ing new work I’m prepar­ing to dis­cuss later this week (hopefully). In the mean­time, I’ve col­lected some re­cent sight­ings of Harper in the wild.

Elijah Potter

Harper in the News

Comments

Other Stuff

Do Not Type Your Notes

Slop Paralysis

Hacker News sans AI