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[ARTICLE · art-84944] src=simonwillison.net ↗ pub= topic=generative-ai verified=true sentiment=· neutral

Quoting David Crawshaw

David Crawshaw, in a blog post titled 'Devtools must be open source', proposes a nightly cron job that fetches upstream changes to software, rebases local changes on top, verifies functionality, and replaces the current version, illustrating a prompt-engineering approach for coding agents.

read1 min views1 publishedAug 3, 2026

Set up a nightly cron job that executes the prompt: fetch upstream changes to the <software> and rebase all local changes on top of upstream. Check that the software works as intended and replace the current version.

— [David Crawshaw](https://blog.exe.dev/devtools-must-be-open-source), Devtools must be open source

Tags: [prompt-engineering](https://simonwillison.net/tags/prompt-engineering), [coding-agents](https://simonwillison.net/tags/coding-agents), [generative-ai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai), [ai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai), [llms](https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms), [open-source](https://simonwillison.net/tags/open-source)
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