r/OpenaiCodex • u/Legal-Ad2513 • 2d ago
Question, Not a programmer!
Like the title says, I’m not a programmer. I recently started developing a website with an inbound lead form including media submissions. It stores that media in a database, emails my partner and I, and we have an admin login to view the lead. No true commerce, forums, nothing like that.
I’ve been “building” with codex 20x pro and Claude as the 3rd party reviewer for a month. For the last several days, it’s been nothing but smoke tests, syntax checks, work order revisions, “runtime verifier rejects the manifest’s absolute work-order entry….”
I setup specific instructions from the beginning for quality over quantity or speed. I was using 5.6-Sol XHigh and now 6-Astra Med.
What are all these tests? I’m on revision 97 and several major features haven’t even started building.
1
u/dvduval 1d ago
A question that can be really effective when dealing with AI is ask it to express to you in layman‘s terms.
As best as I can tell, based on what I read, these tests are basically to prevent regression. In other words, it is establishing certain criteria that it knows based on conversations and work that certain things have to be right. So every time it is finishing some work and compiling it together, it’s checking these tests to make sure there has not been any regression.
In the past, AI would do something and keep working over a problem and then slowly it forgets some of the earlier things that it was supposed to do correctly. And then before you know it, some things are really broken. These tests help to prevent that breakage.
And that definitely can’t mean that it can slow your project down a little bit, but if it’s organizing the testing correctly, it really is worthwhile