Why did retry loops with error feedback outperform carefully engineered prompts?
A single perfect prompt has to anticipate every failure mode in advance, which is nearly impossible across thousands of unique files. A retry loop instead feeds the model its own concrete failure — the exact validation error from the last attempt — so each retry corrects a specific, known problem instead of guessing blind. Most files needed only one or two retries to pass.
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How to Migrate Thousands of Legacy Test Files With LLMs, Not RewritesA step-based pipeline, retry loops instead of perfect prompts, and rich context injection turn a year-long manual migration into a six-week automated one.
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