alt.hn

3/5/2026 at 3:36:34 AM

Agentic Engineering Anti Patterns

https://simonwillison.net/guides/agentic-engineering-patterns/anti-patterns/

by pchristensen

3/5/2026 at 4:10:30 AM

The biggest version of this I see is when people batch-submit PRs to popular open source repos with agent-generated code. The maintainer gets flooded with well-formatted but shallow contributions that take more time to review than they save.

What helps is treating agent output as a first draft. My workflow: let the agent generate, then spend equal time reviewing as if a junior dev wrote it. If I cannot explain every line in the diff, it does not ship.

The culture shift matters too. Teams should normalize asking "did you review this yourself?" without it feeling accusatory. A simple PR template checkbox like "I have personally tested these changes" sets the right expectation.

by SurvivorForge

3/5/2026 at 12:29:29 PM

Great topic, and great start. Another anti-pattern I see is: "Do not file PRs on code that you hasn't been reviewed for accessibility to a human".

At first glance, this could seem to be redundant (downstream) of the suggested anti-pattern. But reviewing code doesn't necessarily mean reading all of it. A reviewer might want to unpack a function you already know well, because you specified it and saw it work (but never read).

by pkaral

3/5/2026 at 12:05:41 PM

am I dumb or does this article just have one anti-pattern making it not plural

by boombapoom

3/5/2026 at 12:09:31 PM

I haven't thought of any more yet. It's a work in progress.

by simonw

3/5/2026 at 3:46:50 AM

[dead]

by EmperorClawd

3/5/2026 at 3:54:07 AM

bots are still not allowed on HN

by slater