This was my experience until recently.. now I'm currently quite enjoying assigning small PRs to copilot and working through them via the GitHub PR interface. It's basically like managing a junior programmer but cheaper and faster. Yes that's not as much fun as writing code but there isn't time for me to write all the code myself.
I use Cursor / ChatGPT extensively and am ready to dip into more of an issue / PR flow but not sure what people are doing here exactly. Specifically for side projects, I tend to think through high level features, then break it down into sub-items much like a PM. But I can easily take it a step further and give each sub issue technical direction, e.g. "Allow font customization: Refactor tailwind font configuration to use CSS variables. Expose those CSS variables via settings module, and add a section to the Preferences UI to let the user pick fonts for Y categories via dropdown; default to X Y Z font for A B C types of text".
Usually I spend a few minutes discussing w/ ChatGPT first, e.g. "What are some typical idioms for font configuration in a typical web / desktop application". Once I get that idea solidified I'd normally start coding, but could just as easily hand this part off for simple-ish stuff and start ironing out he next feature. In the time I'd usually have planned the next 1-2 months of side project work (which happens, say, in 90 minute increments 2x a week), the Agent could knock out maybe half of them. For a project i'm familiar with, I expect I can comfortably review and comment on a PR with much less mental energy than it would take to re-open my code editor for my side project, after an entire day of coding for work + caring for my kids. Personally I'm pretty excited about this.
I have not had great experiences interacting directly with LLMs except when asking for a snippet of code that is generic and commonly done. Now with GitHub Copilot (you need a Pro Plus I think) I'm creating an issues, assigning to Copilot, and then having a back and forth on the PR with Copilot until it's right. Exactly as I would with a junior dev and honestly it's the first time I've felt like AI could make a noticeable difference to my productivity.
I'm not your parent, but Claude at least has the ability to integrate with GitHub such that you can say "@claude please try to fix this bug" on an issue and it'll just go do it.
