By Sascha Brodsky
Publication Date: 2026-02-09 12:00:00
How Goodhart uses these tools depends entirely on what he’s building. He told IBM Think that his workflow breaks into three distinct patterns, each with different levels of AI autonomy.
For greenfield coding (new scripts or entirely new projects), he goes all-in on automation. He writes a textual description of the project, including high-level capabilities and specific constraints like licensing requirements and testing practices, then dumps that description into a text file in the repository and feeds it into the initial prompt. Next comes the ideation phase, with Goodhart working through the plan iteratively with the AI. Once he and the AI are aligned on the approach, he gives the tool “pretty much YOLO mode within the current project repo,” then steps away.
“I create a single wholesale commit with the initial code (unedited), then go piece by piece and ‘chisel’ it out, either manually or with targeted prompting,” he explained.
Small feature work or debugging…
