> The AI workflow was as interesting to me as the retrocomputing work itself
> A coding AI can only hold so much in its context window … The solution was to make the project’s documentation the durable memory that the AI itself lacks. SwiftII was built as 18 numbered phases, 0 through 17, each a self-contained goal with a written record of what it was for and what shipped. The key milestones: […]
> Around the phases sit roughly 20 numbered design documents, each capturing one non-obvious decision. What was chosen, what the alternatives were and how it was done. … As the codebase and documents became bigger, each session had to load more context just to get oriented, so token budget became a real workflow constraint.
ralfd•1h ago
> The AI workflow was as interesting to me as the retrocomputing work itself
> A coding AI can only hold so much in its context window … The solution was to make the project’s documentation the durable memory that the AI itself lacks. SwiftII was built as 18 numbered phases, 0 through 17, each a self-contained goal with a written record of what it was for and what shipped. The key milestones: […]
> Around the phases sit roughly 20 numbered design documents, each capturing one non-obvious decision. What was chosen, what the alternatives were and how it was done. … As the codebase and documents became bigger, each session had to load more context just to get oriented, so token budget became a real workflow constraint.