The paper and example you talk about seem to be about agent or plan mode (in LLM IDEs like Cursor, as those modes are called) while I and the parent are talking about ask mode, which is where the confusion seems to lie. Asking the LLM about the overall structure of an existing codebase works very well.
OK yes, you are right that we might be talking about employing AI toolings in different modes, and that the paper I am referring to is absolutely about agentic tooling executing code changes on your behalf.
That said, the first comment of the person I replied to contained: "You can ask agents to identify and remove cruft", which is pretty explicitly speaking to agent mode. He was also responding to a comment that was talking about how humans spend "hours talking about architectural decisions", which as an action mapped to AI would be more plan mode than ask mode.
Overall I definitely agree that using LLM tools to just tell you things about the structure of a codebase are a great way to use them, and that they are generally better at those one-off tasks than things that involve substantial multi-step communications in the ways humans often do.
I appreciate being the weeds here haha--hopefully we all got a little better talking abou the nuances of these things :)
