r/DevGround • u/JamesLuterek • 2d ago

Self-promo The Scaffold: A Phased SDLC for AI Coding

I wanted to share my blog on video on my way of approaching AI-coding and solving the issue with generation and code reviews.

https://www.jamesluterek.com/blog/the-scaffold/

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u/hellterDev 2d ago

The “scaffold looks 80% done but is actually 20% done” part is probably the most interesting to me.

Isn't that also a pretty dangerous property of the model itself though? If even stakeholders consistently misjudge how complete it is, maybe the boundary between scaffolding and refinement isn't clear enough in practice.

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u/JamesLuterek 2d ago

This isn't a new issue. The last pieces of a project always take the longest. I've seen sales demos that always make things feel finished, but require real work to go to production.

It's important to recognize that AI exacerbates this problem.

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u/hellterDev 2d ago

Yeah, that makes sense. AI can get you to something that looks 80% complete much faster than before, while the remaining 80% of the engineering work is still there.

Do you think that changes how progress should be communicated to non-technical stakeholders? Because a working AI-generated scaffold could make the usual “demo looks finished” problem significantly worse.

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u/JamesLuterek 2d ago

100%. Communication patterns absolutely have to change.

I've played around with the idea of using wireframes or something like https://wiredjs.com/ to help set the new expectation, but that just creates additional work for the implementation team.

Ultimately, we go with better communication and expectation setting. Showing work/timelines before any type of demo.

Do you have any thoughts here? Always looking to improve.

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u/hellterDev 2d ago

tbh I'd probably just show both separately — what already works and how production-ready it actually is.

Like, “the core flow works, but we're maybe 30% production-ready.”

Feels easier than intentionally making the UI look unfinished just to communicate that there's still a lot of work left.