What harness did you use?
In e.g. claude, there are two modes:
1. Spit out code 2. Draft a plan, ask questions, GOTO 1
You literally have to go out of your way to get it NOT to write code. I keep mine on a tight-ish leash because it modify code way too happily even when there's no intention or instruction to do so
I don't think this is using an agent harness.
They are either using some generic web frontend, ala chatgpt, some local app like claude desktop, or programming app like cursor.
Each of those will detect that you are "building an app" and will spit out code in one form or another. You have to try really hard and be very explicit that you want the output in some other format than code.
None of this is related to intelligence, desire or potential. It's about context and experience. The vast majority of people use their computers as consumption devices, like a TV. If I asked you to "make a movie" where would you start?
As for a coding harness, I prefer the term agentic coding.
That’s why the question only makes sense if it was relayed to the laywoman, in this case.
I let her do all of it without influencing her choices. She choose the web interface of ChatGPT because she already had an account and that's the tool she was familiar with.
While I agree with you it is not an optimal choice, web chatgpt can solve the problem. I just asked it now to do it (in my own words) and it spit out the code in one go.
It all boils down to naming things and cache invalidation, /s
I am doing perfectly fine with the web UI version of these tools... They seem to also not make tokens dissappear as fast as using claude cli tool to automate implementations. Makes my work day more tolerable as well as I actually have something to do over waiting until some implementation can be read through...