I've been writing code a long time. The modern method of using coding agents ( pi , opencode , etc.) has so much promise and can be made to do a fair bit of work. But these systems break down as the projects get more complex, larger, or even just more mature.

My primary frustrations stem from 3 main points:

My own skill/knowledge (or lack of).

My local coding environment (Ollama, local LLMs whenever possible, cheap free cloud LLMs, etc.).

Agent focus and capabilities.

I want to discuss the last point and my frustrations here.

Session Based

Coding agents tend to be session based. Token limits are the primary reason behind this. It also is a simple method to provide some organization to what can otherwise be a very complex conversation. The end result though is we need to stay very focused on one particular topic or problem domain. Straying from that topic leads to unnecessary token usage, and confuses responses.…