> the scope is so small there's not much point in using an LLM

Actually that's how I did most of my work last year. I was annoyed by existing tools so I made one that can be used interactively.

It has full context (I usually work on small codebases), and can make an arbitrary number of edits to an arbitrary number of files in a single LLM round trip.

For such "mechanical" changes, you can use the cheapest/fastest model available. This allows you to work interactively and stay in flow.

(In contrast to my previous obsession with the biggest, slowest, most expensive models! You actually want the dumbest one that can do the job.)

I call it "power coding", akin to power armor, or perhaps "coding at the speed of thought". I found that staying actively involved in this way (letting LLM only handle the function level) helped keep my mental model synchronized, whereas if I let it work independently, I'd have to spend more time catching up on what it had done.

I do use both approaches though, just depends on the project, task or mood!