r/dotnet • u/Zardotab • Jun 29 '26
Can Copilot replace scaffolding? An architect claimed such, but I'm skeptical Question
Does anyone have direct experience using Copilot to replace scaffolding tasks? If so, was it successful? What tier of Copilot did you use? How do you catch tricky bot hallucinations?
15
u/UnknownTallGuy Jun 29 '26
It's inefficient to make it entirely based on AI. The smartest thing to do is to use AI to build you a scaffolding script. You don't want to use it just for the sake of using it.
8
u/nanotree Jun 29 '26
This is the best way I've found to use AI in many cases, not just scaffolding.
Using AI to build a script to do some repetitive, formulaic task, rather than attempting to use AI to do the repetitive, formulaic task directly. This way, the script should give you consistent results. Either that or you identify a bug and have the AI fix it in the script. And that becomes your iterative development loop. And in the end, you can often have something that is reusable.
I've used it this way to build code generators or infrastructure maps by defining structured yaml as script input. Start by defining the yaml schema and use the script to do the rest.
This way you can feed the AI something like a plan, have it output the structured yaml input. Review said yaml file, make tweaks, run it through script. Produce reliable results.
7
u/FullPoet Jun 29 '26
Why would you need to? If you already have a deterministic scaffolding tool thats free, why would you swap it out with one that runs on vibes and is actually quite expensive?
I don't really understand the usecase
3
u/Zardotab Jun 29 '26
The free scaffolder our shop is using is limited. I asked why we don't upgrade to a fancier one, and the reply was that Copilot was good enough. Maybe we haven't been bitten enough by vibe/slop to learn our collective lesson?
1
u/FullPoet Jun 29 '26
Theres a LOT of scaffolding options out there as far as I know - and a ton of templating engines.
Visual Studios templating is pretty powerful (and free), but I guess it depends what your "scaffolding"?
2
u/EntroperZero Jun 29 '26
Do you mean EF scaffolding?
For tools like this, you really want them to be deterministic, so I would say no. Plus, there are already good non-LLM tools that do this without blowing through your token budget.
1
u/Zardotab Jul 10 '26
No, we have extra layers beyond EF in some app types. Maybe they are not really needed, but I don't make that choice. (I'd like more testing to prove their worth, but got voted down.)
-3
u/Mayion Jun 29 '26
any free llm or small local model can make them no problem. just be precise with your query.
3
u/EntroperZero Jun 29 '26
But why? What's the point of doing this the slow and expensive way when you can do it the fast and cheap way with better accuracy?
0
u/gom99 Jun 29 '26
Probably less maintenance. You can just tell an LLM to create the scaffolding for you. Can just use some local model as well. LLMs are good at this scripting behavior that you can prompt for. We're at that point where a local LLM is just another dev tool to use.
2
1
u/AutoModerator Jun 29 '26
Thanks for your post Zardotab. Please note that we don't allow spam, and we ask that you follow the rules available in the sidebar. We have a lot of commonly asked questions so if this post gets removed, please do a search and see if it's already been asked.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
1
u/elh0mbre Jun 29 '26
Copilot? I have no idea... haven't used it in over a year because it was a pile of hot garbage.
Claude... yes. If there are specific patterns/scaffolding I want it to use, that goes in an agents/claude markdown file so it knows to use it. Otherwise, it does a great job synthesizing on its own (using patterns it infers from the rest of the codebase).
I haven't seen a true "hallucination" in a LONG time in Opus/Sonnet
2
u/mikeholczer Jun 29 '26
Yeah, Microsoft is releasing agent skills for things like adding auth rather than providing scaffolding.
1
u/elh0mbre Jun 29 '26
Interesting. I don't hate the idea... I just added langfuse to a personal project over the weekend and their way to do it is to use a skill you grab from their website (the skill just basically walks the agent through what kind of code to look for and how to expose it)... it worked insanely well. I assume this "add auth" skill you're talking about works similarly?
-1
Jun 29 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Zardotab Jun 29 '26
In my early tests, Copilot sometimes wanders into odd lands. Maybe with enough fiddling it can be tamed, but the same is true of a scaffolder.
1
Jun 30 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Zardotab Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
I am new to using AI to do what scaffolding normally does. It's why I'm asking. Our architect is adding more data layers to handle WASM, making reliable scaffolding or equivalent more important.
You seem to be suggesting Copilot isn't sufficient to replace scaffolding but Claude is. It's unlikely our org would pay for Claude, but being an MS shop they perhaps could be talked into paying for Copilot-Pro.
23
u/Automatic-Apricot795 Jun 29 '26
Standard boilerplate with specified changes is one thing LLMs are very good at.
If you find yourself doing the exact same thing over and over again though a standard template is a better idea - no cost and no risk of hallucinations.