Why do you orchestrate the AI manually? You could write a BUILD file that just does it in a loop a few times, or I guess if you lack build system interaction, write a python script?

> If it knows how to make the code more readable and / or better for performance by me simply asking "can you make this more readable and performant?" then it should be able to provide this result from the beginning.

This is the wrong way to think about AI (at least with our current tech). If you give AI a general task, it won't focus its attention at any of these aspects in particular. But, after you create the code, if you use separate readability and optimization feedback loops where you specifically ask it to work on those aspects of the code, it will do a much better job.

People who feel like AI should just do the right thing already without further prompting or attention focus are just going to be frustrated.

> Btw, this isn't about code formatting or linting. It's about how the logic is written.

Yes, but you still aren't focusing the AI's attention on the problem. You can also write a guide that it puts into context for things you notice that it consistently does wrong. But I would make it a separate pass, get the code to be correct first, and then go through readability refactors (while keeping the code still passing its tests).