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> that basically consisted of applying the same steps and rules n times.

Why use a non-deterministic, possibly hallucinatory, definitely expensive, LLM when it sounds like a codemod is the perfect solution for this?

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In this case, handling all the edge cases and variants, and testing a codemod, would have taken significantly more of my time, which costs quite a bit more than the LLM.

Obviously, a deterministic tool is preferable in general, but it is not always worth bothering with for a one off task.

I usually make the llms do that part for me. Instead of asking the llm to refactor, ask it to write the codemod script that'll refactor, have it test that script, and even have it run it on its own. It's definitely faster and less error prone that way for me.

In that case, your original description of "basically consisted of applying the same steps and rules n times" was misleading.

The money people spend on things I could probably do with an emacs macro...

Your time to create that macro ain't free.

How about coding an emacs macro with your agent?

I actually don't have any representation at the moment..

Neither is your time writing that prompt. When people are talking about elaborate prompts, with a lot of detailed instructions, guardrails etc. I'm kind of assuming it takes time.

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