[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":207},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog-149-prompts":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"body":6,"date":193,"description":194,"extension":195,"image":196,"meta":197,"navigation":198,"next":196,"path":199,"prev":196,"seo":200,"series":196,"stem":201,"tags":202,"__hash__":206,"prevPost":196,"nextPost":196},"blog\u002Fblog\u002F149-prompts.md","What 149 prompts actually look like",{"type":7,"value":8,"toc":184},"minimark",[9,18,21,26,102,105,109,112,115,119,122,125,128,132,135,138,141,145,178],[10,11,12,13,17],"p",{},"I didn't hand-write most of this site. I described what I wanted, read what came back, and corrected\nit — over and over, for a week. That came to ",[14,15,16],"strong",{},"149 prompts",". I went back through the logs to count,\nbecause I was curious whether the story I'd tell about the process matched what actually happened.",[10,19,20],{},"It mostly didn't.",[22,23,25],"h2",{"id":24},"the-tally","The tally",[27,28,29,42],"table",{},[30,31,32],"thead",{},[33,34,35,39],"tr",{},[36,37,38],"th",{},"Day",[36,40,41],{},"Prompts",[43,44,45,54,62,70,78,86,94],"tbody",{},[33,46,47,51],{},[48,49,50],"td",{},"Jul 12",[48,52,53],{},"4",[33,55,56,59],{},[48,57,58],{},"Jul 13",[48,60,61],{},"14",[33,63,64,67],{},[48,65,66],{},"Jul 14",[48,68,69],{},"47",[33,71,72,75],{},[48,73,74],{},"Jul 15",[48,76,77],{},"3",[33,79,80,83],{},[48,81,82],{},"Jul 16",[48,84,85],{},"21",[33,87,88,91],{},[48,89,90],{},"Jul 17",[48,92,93],{},"27",[33,95,96,99],{},[48,97,98],{},"Jul 18",[48,100,101],{},"33",[10,103,104],{},"Spread across 34 separate sessions. Those 149 prompts turned into 38 commits — roughly four prompts\nper meaningful unit of work — and somewhere north of two thousand individual actions taken on my\nbehalf: files read, files edited, commands run, pages loaded in a browser to check the result.",[22,106,108],{"id":107},"more-prompts-did-not-mean-more-progress","More prompts did not mean more progress",[10,110,111],{},"Look at July 14: 47 prompts, my busiest day by a wide margin, and it produced 10 commits. July 13\nproduced 12 commits from 14 prompts.",[10,113,114],{},"So my heaviest day was my least efficient one. I remember that day — it wasn't building, it was\ncircling. Small corrections, re-explanations, \"no, not like that.\" The prompt count wasn't measuring\noutput, it was measuring friction. That's a genuinely useful signal in hindsight: when the prompts\nstart piling up fast, that's the cue to stop and rethink the approach, not to keep nudging.",[22,116,118],{"id":117},"the-scaffolding-i-was-proudest-of-barely-got-used","The scaffolding I was proudest of barely got used",[10,120,121],{},"Early on I set up a whole supporting cast — specialised assistants for reviewing code, checking\naccessibility, writing copy — plus a set of shortcut commands for common workflows. I spent real\ntime on it. It felt like the clever part.",[10,123,124],{},"Final usage: the assistants were called on 16 times, the shortcuts 6.",[10,126,127],{},"What actually carried the work was much duller: a single project file describing the conventions,\nthe structure, and the mistakes I'd already hit. Every session read it first and behaved\naccordingly. The leverage was in the written-down context, not in the machinery I built around it.",[22,129,131],{"id":130},"being-asked-was-better-than-being-obeyed","Being asked was better than being obeyed",[10,133,134],{},"Thirty-six times the agent stopped and asked me something instead of guessing — usually a fork where\ntwo reasonable interpretations existed and picking wrong would have meant redoing the work.",[10,136,137],{},"Those were the best moments of the whole build. An assistant that confidently does the wrong thing\nis worse than useless, because you have to find the damage before you can undo it. I'd rather answer\na question than review a mess.",[10,139,140],{},"I also cleared the conversation and started fresh 11 times. Knowing when the context has gone stale\nturned out to be its own small skill.",[22,142,144],{"id":143},"what-id-tell-someone-starting","What I'd tell someone starting",[146,147,148,155,161,167,172],"ul",{},[149,150,151,154],"li",{},[14,152,153],{},"Write down your conventions before you write any code."," It pays for itself in a day.",[149,156,157,160],{},[14,158,159],{},"One thing per prompt."," Bundled requests come back half-done in ways that are tedious to untangle.",[149,162,163,166],{},[14,164,165],{},"Watch your own prompt rate."," A sudden spike means you're fighting, not building.",[149,168,169],{},[14,170,171],{},"Start fresh more often than feels necessary.",[149,173,174,177],{},[14,175,176],{},"Read everything before it lands."," You still own the result.",[179,180,181],"blockquote",{},[10,182,183],{},"The tooling I built to make this faster mattered less than the paragraph I wrote explaining what I\nwanted. That's the whole lesson.",{"title":185,"searchDepth":186,"depth":186,"links":187},"",2,[188,189,190,191,192],{"id":24,"depth":186,"text":25},{"id":107,"depth":186,"text":108},{"id":117,"depth":186,"text":118},{"id":130,"depth":186,"text":131},{"id":143,"depth":186,"text":144},"2026-07-18","I built this site by talking to an AI agent instead of typing most of the code. Here's the honest tally, and what surprised me.","md",null,{},true,"\u002Fblog\u002F149-prompts",{"title":5,"description":194},"blog\u002F149-prompts",[203,204,205],"AI","Process","Reflection","XWDn7hwV_arbRZ83EQztfQuEImOtYQjQK0OJkbHD7qk",1786402985635]