The sharp results all came from pairing domain expertise with detailed AGENTS.md files. The impressive Rust output happened because someone who knows Rust was steering it. Vague prompts got mediocre output. A model on its own converges to the mean of its training data, which is why the "vibe code everything" thesis keeps not holding up: https://philippdubach.com/posts/the-impossible-backhand/

Thanks Max! This was a really interesting article and closely matches my own experience with how the agents have been progressing

one of the takeaways I get when reading skilled engineers' experiences with these tools is that they essentially offer leverage, and the more skill someone already has the higher their ceiling will be

This is my favorite yet of the genre of "OK, coding agents got good in November" posts. It starts with relatively simple examples (YouTube metadata scraping) and by the end Max is rewriting Python's skikit-learn framework in Rust and making it way faster.

this post reflects my experience with the model...

I second that spending effort on your AGENTS.md is game changing. Don't auto generate these, work with them and learn how to make them good (sparknotes and table of contents, keep minimal, distribute over dirs)

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