Coming from more of test-driven development background, I found that tinkering in the REPL was similar to what I would usually do with unit tests, but without the ability to easily build up a test suite that would prevent regressions in future.
So usually I end up mostly living within (comment) blocks around the functions I'm interacting with, and when I'm happy with it, move the code into the correct test namespace, which is a matter of just moving the code around and changing references to namespaces.
I'll start by writing a bunch of tests and have a test runner that runs all my tests everytime I change my source code and displays the results. It's fast, I have one project that runs ~1400 asserts and on each save it shows the results less than 2 seconds later.
THen I write the code in my IDE source editor and use a keyboard shortcut to send it to the REPL as I'm working. I wouldn't ever write code directly in the REPL. By the time I've got it working in the REPL I normally then see that all my tests are passing.
I missed a trick in life, i started getting into Clojure in 2020 but about 5 years ago i used to sit 1 row of desks away from Stuart Sierra in Stirling and I don’t think i ever properly spoke to him save for hello or so. It was a funny setup in that operation, i had to fight for my small team to even have office space at the time!
Yes, it's called discipline ;)
In Clojure(or JS for example) you have to rely more on being disciplined around tests and documentation than with a statically typed language.