Most of these issues are vastly improved or mitigated by adding clear instructions in AGENTS.md.
I follow a specific process with agents, and it works reasonably well:
1) describe my intended feature or change and then say “please recapitulate my intention and write an implementation plan”
2) read the plan carefully and refine it, make any corrections
3) tell the agent to go, but I check in frequently as it’s going. I watch the stream of thought and make course corrections or pull it out of rabbit holes
4) carefully review the result. Checking that tests actually fail, removing unnecessary changes
5) add instructions in AGENTS.md if I’ve found a new behavior that needs redirection
I follow a specific process with agents, and it works reasonably well: 1) describe my intended feature or change and then say “please recapitulate my intention and write an implementation plan” 2) read the plan carefully and refine it, make any corrections 3) tell the agent to go, but I check in frequently as it’s going. I watch the stream of thought and make course corrections or pull it out of rabbit holes 4) carefully review the result. Checking that tests actually fail, removing unnecessary changes 5) add instructions in AGENTS.md if I’ve found a new behavior that needs redirection