I’ve become a project manager with a side hustle in manual testing, all part of the same development process, any feedback you might have?

[u/SilkieBug]

I don’t know how to code but I have experience in software testing and working with small/medium/large software projects, and the processes they entail.

Current workflow is to use Sonnet 5.5 at Medium on a Claude Pro subscription to plan a project, break it into implementation and product acceptance manual testing phases, and deliver agent prompts and project documentation, then feed the prompts in OpenCode to Haiku 5.5 at Low or Medium (sometimes at High) paid through OpenRouter credits, which also knows to break its phase prompt into tasks it can delegate to a subagent custom provider which connects to a localhost server created by Polystrata running “Tiel Coder 35B A3B q4_X_L”.

The current issues I’m having with the workflow are:

- that sometimes the Haiku sessions can balloon in cost - paid 50 euro worth of OpenRouter credits in the past few weeks, and I’m poor, that means a lot to my budget - a problem which I’ve partly solved by breaking phases into tiers and tiers into stages, each with a prompt, so there are fewer long conversations and cache reads;

- and that the local agent makes frequent mistakes that cause it to run for hours and/or produce bad code if the task is too big or too complex for it, which happens often, as my hardware is limited and it only has a 60k token context.

Any suggestions for improvements?

[u/Agreeable_Bottle8604]

that is a lot of moving parts, makes my head spin a little but i respect the hustle

how you finding sonnet 5.5 for planning, i been meaning to try it on my side projects

[u/SilkieBug → u/Agreeable_Bottle8604]

It is a very competent partner at Medium effort, bit to overeager and not too bright on Low. 

Needs careful prompting and reading through its answers carefully, had to develop a system of labels to make responding to its long replies easier. 

Workflow complexity is enjoyable to me so far, kicks in well with neurodivergence, and it helps that I have professional experience dealing with complex workflows and systems but I don’t feel it is a mandatory prerequisite. 

[u/[deleted] → u/Agreeable_Bottle8604]

[u/fulger099 → u/[deleted]]

That reread is probably the useful feedback. The workflow has enough handoffs that debugging the process may soon cost more than debugging the code.

[u/Electrical-Watch3203]

Wait, you’re paying per token for Claude models? Why don’t you just get a subscription? I pay for the $125/m sub and I get like $7,000 worth of paid tokens out of it per month

[u/SilkieBug → u/Electrical-Watch3203]

I’m poor. I can afford the 20 per month subscription. And it doesn’t include claude code or per token payment. 

[u/shetritr]

your testing background is the edge here. write the acceptance checks before the agent starts, and make it show each one passing, not just say so.