>but the code to me is a forcing mechanism into ironing out the details, and I don't get that when I'm writing a specification.

This is so on point. The spec as code people try again and again. But reality always punches holes in their spec.

A spec that wasn't exercised in code, is like a drawing of a car, no matter how detailed that drawing is, you can't drive it, and it hides 90% of the complexity.

To me the value of LLMs is not so much in the code they write. They're usually to verbose, start building weird things when you don't constantly micromanage them.

But you can ask very broad questions, iteratively refine the answer, critique what you don't like. They're good as a sounding board.