- Author
- Geoffrey Litt
- Published
- October 2025
- Kind
- Personal blog post, workflow opinion
- Original
- www.geoffreylitt.com/2025/10/24/code-like-a-surgeon
- Subject
- Coding with agents
What it is
Geoffrey Litt is a UI prototyper. The post describes how the author uses AI coding tools. It contrasts this with the view that AI makes developers managers or editors.
What it says
- The post argues AI will not make developers managers; the author codes like a surgeon.
- A surgeon does the real work, supported by a team handling prep and admin.
- The author hands off codebase guides, spikes of big changes, clearly specified bugs, and documentation.
- The author runs these tasks in the background, even overnight, with looser oversight.
- The author says the idea is old: Fred Brooks credits Harlan Mills for it.
What evidence it gives
The evidence is the author's own practice and a list of examples. The post names tools used, including Claude Code, Codex CLI and Cursor tab-complete. It gives no measurements.
Interests and limits
The author works at Notion and says so. The post links the idea to Notion's product direction. The post reports one person's experience as a UI prototyper. It does not test the approach on other kinds of work or teams.