this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2026
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"Properly prompting" is to not prompt. A chat interface is the lowest fidelity interface to use with an LLM.
Tell me more? It's the only way I'm familiar with interacting with an LLM
Examples to consider:
A code base with TODOs embedded will make fewer mistakes and spend less tokens than if you attempt to direct the LLM only with prompting.
A file system gives an LLM more context than a flat file (or large prompt) with the same contents because a file system has a tree like structure and makes it less likely the LLM will ingest context it doesn't need and confuse it
Lastly consider the efficacy of providing it tools vs using agent skills which is another form of prompting. Giving an LLM a deterministic feedback loop beats tweaking your prompts every time
Ok so i think i do all of these things and would just describe them as "other ways to prompt and LLM" - i think the nuance youre shooting for here is that using these methods you are "pre-preparing" the prompt - not thinking about it at prompt-time and thus likely to miss stuff.
e.g. Feeding a TODO is just the same as copy-pasting that todo in as a prompt.
Have I understood you correctly?
No, it's not the same as copying and pasting the TODO into a prompt. Embedding the TODO in code instead of the prompt reduces tokens burned and increases accuracy because it's observing the TODO in context. Sure you can write more prompting to provide that context, but it still won't be as accurate. The less context you provide via prompting and instead provide more context through automatic deterministc feedback the better the results
Okay so now I think you're describing the behaviour I take for granted with the harness i.e. Claude Code.
Having good repo readiness through a good agents/claude.md file + tests + docs means the LLM is able to read more files into its context.
It never occurred to me that anyone would prompt in isolation of their repos but I guess thats exactly what it was like for me last year when I was just feeding ChatGPT prompts away from the repo.
Yes, code harnesses help by providing deterministic feedback like with a language server and reduce the amount of prompting requirements. I guess I should have led with that example 😅
Gotcha...I've always struggled to pick up the vocabulary around technical concepts - I guess ive just never prioritised it, and now this whole new field has materialised with a whole new vocabulary to go along with it! I get the tech. The words are my achilles heel.