Gil Zilberfeld

Gil Zilberfeld has been a software practitioner since the days of his Sinclair ZX81. With over 25 years of hands-on experience, he is a consultant, trainer, and speaker who helps development teams elevate their craft. Gil challenges conventional thinking about how software gets built - whether that's outdated QA dogma or the assumption that AI coding agents will just figure out your engineering practices on their own. He builds real systems with AI tools daily, and shares the honest lessons: what works, what breaks, and what needs mechanical enforcement no matter how smart the model gets. From TDD and clean architecture to AI-assisted development workflows, he provides actionable frameworks grounded in real production experience. You can find his practical advice and courses at testingil.com.

TestinGil, Israeltestingil.com gil_zilberfeld gilzilberfeld gilzilberfeld

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react node.js testing devtools react components code quality build tools team productivity tooling react hooks next.js typescript frontend best practices design systems javascript

Teaching AI to Build Software My Way

AI Coding Summit Berlin

Upcoming

Teaching AI to Build Software My Way

I've been doing TDD and clean architecture for years. When I started using Claude Code to build a real application, I wanted to create it the right way from day one - test-first, walking skeleton, steps sized for review.
And it worked. Partially. The agent could explain TDD better than most developers, but then skipped the red phase in the same session. And when I noticed, it apologized. And did that again.
It also avoided my recommendation to change only a few files at one go. And when I noticed - this one was hard to hide - it apologized. Then did it again.
Code agents do what we ask, until they decide not to. And that put our product at risk.
The good news: My way - using the classic hits - works. I just needed to teach it to my agent. And that requires putting reinforcements in place. Measure things and report them on the way, and make tasks small so they can be reviewed without putting the human to sleep.
In this session I'll show the steps, prompts, processes I set in the project to implement my ideal work process. I'll show how I enforced the TDD loop. How I made sure no extra code was created. The structured planning. And the thought process behind making the automation controllable and reviewable.
I'll also show how the project evolved to support my learning and retaining knowledge, performing diagnostics and tracking decisions.
I'm now producing code I can trust. And you can take those techniques and use them in your process too.

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