3 AI Coding Workflows I Use Daily (and 2 I Abandoned)

I've been using AI assistants for coding daily for over a year. Some workflows stuck. Others looked great on paper but wasted more time than they saved. Here are the three I kept — and two I dropped. ✅ Workflow 1: The Spec-First Draft Before I ask an AI to write any code, I write a one-paragraph spec: Build a function that takes a list of timestamps and returns the longest gap between consecutive entries. Input: list of ISO-8601 strings. Output: { gapMs: number, start: string, end: string }. Throw if the list has fewer than 2 entries. That's it. No prompt engineering tricks. Just a clear description of what I want, what goes in, and what comes out. Why it works: The AI doesn't have to guess your intent. You spend 30 seconds writing the spec and save 10 minutes of back-and-forth. Why I kept it: Every time I skip the spec "because it's simple," the output is wrong on the first try. ✅ Workflow 2: The Review-First Read When I inherit unfamiliar code, I paste the file and ask: Read this fil