I think it depends on what you're exploring, honestly.
TDD comes out of the same circles as Extreme Programming, aka XP. In XP, there's something known as a spike, which is basically a short-lived technical prototype. If you really don't know how to tackle something, you build a quick one to throw away.
In that case, yes, definitely don't do TDD, because a goal of TDD is to build up a good test suite for production code. It's not a good match for throwaway code (assuming the team really has the discipline to throw it away.)
But if I'm exploring in a way that feels less disposable to me, which happens often, then I'm happy to use TDD. E.g., if I want to try out a new way of solving a problem, or I have an idea for an architectural improvement. Then I'll use TDD to force myself to think about it from the outside in, to keep design considerations to the forefront.
TDD comes out of the same circles as Extreme Programming, aka XP. In XP, there's something known as a spike, which is basically a short-lived technical prototype. If you really don't know how to tackle something, you build a quick one to throw away.
In that case, yes, definitely don't do TDD, because a goal of TDD is to build up a good test suite for production code. It's not a good match for throwaway code (assuming the team really has the discipline to throw it away.)
But if I'm exploring in a way that feels less disposable to me, which happens often, then I'm happy to use TDD. E.g., if I want to try out a new way of solving a problem, or I have an idea for an architectural improvement. Then I'll use TDD to force myself to think about it from the outside in, to keep design considerations to the forefront.