{"slug": "ask-hn-engineers-on-highly-polished-products-how-are-you-using-agentic-coding", "title": "Ask HN: Engineers on highly polished products, how are you using agentic coding?", "summary": "A Hacker News user asked engineers at highly polished product companies such as Linear, Instagram, Google Docs, and Figma how they use agentic coding, noting that agentic tools get projects 90% of the way to \"finished\" but that reaching real polish takes monumental effort when \"vibing.\" The Ask HN post, which had 3 points and 1 comment at the time of the source, asks whether those organizations simply move slower or still rely on humans for visual design and copy editing. The question contrasts world-class products that stayed polished before and after LLMs with vibe-coded apps that lack professional polish.", "body_md": "Hi HN,\n\nAgentic coding is amazing at getting you 90% of the way to \"finished\", but getting products to feel really polished seems to take monumental effort if you're just \"vibing\".\n\nYet engineers working on world-class products have ample access to plenty of frontier LLM tokens. Products like Linear, Instagram, Google Docs, Figma, etc. This class of products were super polished *before* LLMs took over, and they've stayed polished in the post-LLM era.\n\nMy question: What's different about how those products are built/maintained that keeps them feeling polished?\n\nCompare with so many vibe-coded apps we've all seen, which almost universally feel like they're missing that polish that makes them feel professional.\n\nFor example:\n\n- Are these organizations simply moving slower? (As they're already incumbent in the space.)\n\n- Is visual design, copy editing, etc. still being done by (gasp) humans?\n\nWould *love* to hear any first- or second-hand accounts!\n\nComments URL: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49812392](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49812392)\n\nPoints: 3\n\n# Comments: 1", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ask-hn-engineers-on-highly-polished-products-how-are-you-using-agentic-coding", "canonical_source": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49812392", "published_at": "2026-09-23 06:25:21+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-23 06:53:44.040938+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "ai-tools", "ai-products", "developer-tools"], "entities": ["Hacker News", "Linear", "Instagram", "Google Docs", "Figma"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ask-hn-engineers-on-highly-polished-products-how-are-you-using-agentic-coding", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ask-hn-engineers-on-highly-polished-products-how-are-you-using-agentic-coding.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ask-hn-engineers-on-highly-polished-products-how-are-you-using-agentic-coding.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ask-hn-engineers-on-highly-polished-products-how-are-you-using-agentic-coding.jsonld"}}