Like everyone here, I’ve found that Agent is awesome for the first 50%-80% of an app. But totally spins and falls apart for the long tail of completing an app.
But I have recently had some successes that I wanted to share.
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A BPM tapper - Tap a button in time and get the BPM
The cool thing about this one is I did it while driving. I had the idea, I pulled up Replit, used voice to text to create a small prompt, and boom it was there. This is the future, I can create and deploy a concise app/tool on the go. -
API for website to pdf
This one took more work. There were a lot of difficult dependency issues, I had to manually fix it all. But still was able to do in the mobile app while waiting in the airport. I was really impressed with the usability in the app. This was the first time I had used the dependency pane and it was great to be able to circumvent the agent.
The win here is that I was able to get the app working, on my phone, on the go. But, this would have been impossible for me to get working if I wasn’t a professional software engineer.
Note: the wkthtmltopdf nix dependency totally breaks the python environment, as soon as it is installed, python (or python3) is no longer accessible.
- Personal website with a cool terminal emulator interaction
I’ve been wanting to do something like this for a while, on a walk I started replit on the prompt. I put it back in my pocket. Then checked when I got home a few minutes late, it was there.
Summary
I know that Replit is targeting non-technical people for this agent. But I find that there is no real way to rely on the ability for it to deliver on this. Obviously this may change with time, more powerful models, and integrating lessons.
As a software engineer I am loving how it enables me to prototype/build on the go. I am settling into a new kind of building process with AI where the focus is on building very small, concise functionality. Then I can architect the integrations/glue.
I find that asking AI to build software like humans, i.e. across an entire codebase, where a functional change might touch a bunch of pieces, is a recipe for failure. Asking AI to build “self-contained” bits of functionality, and telling it the shape of its dependencies is more reliable.
Anyways, wanted to share some exciting wins with Replit, as well as a bit of my evolving approach to building software with AI.
Hope y’all find it at least mildly interesting 
Also: Hilarious to be blocked because of the word s h o r t…
