Why? Isn’t documentation just approximation of the code and therefore less informative for inference than the code itself?
I understand that the code doesn’t contain the architectural intent, but if the LLM writing it can’t provide that then it will never replace the architect.
Of course an LLM can make a thorough design analysis and extract architectural patterns.
But it doesn't have infinite memory and context.
On top of that, it may recognize patterns, but not their intent and scope.
Documentation is gold for humans and LLMs. But LLMs have been the very first major moment in this field that has very little, to no, engineering practices to focus on documentation and specs.
Its about the mental model of the codebase, mentioned by the GP.
Somehow my experience is that no matter how much documentation or context there is, eventually the model will do the wrong thing because it won't be able to figure out something that makes sense in context of the design direction, even if it's painstakingly documented. So eventually the hardest work - that of understanding everything down to the smallest detail - will have to be done anyway.
And if all it was missing was more documentation... Then the agent should have been able to generate that as the first step. But somehow it can't do it in a way that helps it suceed at the task.
I understand that the code doesn’t contain the architectural intent, but if the LLM writing it can’t provide that then it will never replace the architect.