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🧬 Glue Coding

The holy grail and silver bullet of software engineering - finally here.

🚀 Disruptive Manifesto

Glue Coding is not a technology, but a revolution.

It might perfectly solve the three fatal flaws of Vibe Coding:

Traditional Vibe Coding Pain Points Glue Coding Solution
🎭 AI Hallucinations - Generates non-existent APIs, incorrect logic ✅ Zero Hallucinations - Uses only validated, mature code
🧩 Complexity Explosion - The larger the project, the more out of control ✅ Zero Complexity - Each module is a battle-tested wheel
🎓 High Barrier - Requires deep programming skills to master AI ✅ No Barrier - You only need to describe "how to connect"

💡 Core Concept

Traditional Programming: Humans write code
Vibe Coding: AI writes code, humans review code
Glue Coding: AI connects code, humans review connections

Paradigm Shift

A fundamental shift from "generation" to "connection":

  • ❌ No longer letting AI generate code from scratch (source of hallucinations)

  • ❌ No longer reinventing the wheel (source of complexity)

  • ❌ No longer requiring you to understand every line of code (source of high barrier)

  • ✅ Only reusing mature, production-validated open-source projects

  • ✅ AI's sole responsibility: understand your intent, connect modules

  • ✅ Your sole responsibility: clearly describe "what is the input, what is the desired output"

🏗️ Architectural Philosophy

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    Your Business Needs                   │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                           │
                           ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                   AI Glue Layer                        │
│                                                         │
│   "I understand what you want to do, let me connect these blocks" │
│                                                         │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                           │
          ┌────────────────┼────────────────┐
          ▼                ▼                ▼
   ┌─────────────┐  ┌─────────────┐  ┌─────────────┐
   │ Mature Module A │  │ Mature Module B │  │ Mature Module C │
   │  (100K+ ⭐)   │  │  (Production-Validated)  │  │  (Official SDK)  │
   └─────────────┘  └─────────────┘  └─────────────┘

Entity: Mature open-source projects, official SDKs, battle-tested libraries Link: AI-generated glue code, responsible for data flow and interface adaptation Function: Your described business goal

🎯 Why is this a Silver Bullet?

1. Hallucination Issue → Completely Disappears

AI no longer needs to "invent" anything. It only needs to:

  • Read Module A's documentation
  • Read Module B's documentation
  • Write the data transformation from A → B

This is what AI excels at, and what is least prone to errors.

2. Complexity Issue → Transferred to the Community

Behind each module are:

  • Discussions from thousands of Issues
  • Wisdom from hundreds of contributors
  • Years of production environment refinement

You are not managing complexity; you are standing on the shoulders of giants.

3. Barrier Issue → Reduced to a Minimum

You don't need to understand:

  • Underlying implementation principles
  • Best practice details
  • Edge case handling

You only need to speak plain language:

"I want to take messages from Telegram, process them with GPT, and store them in PostgreSQL"

AI will help you find the most suitable wheels and glue them together.

📋 Practice Flow

1. Define the Goal
   └─→ "I want to implement XXX functionality"

2. Find the Wheels
   └─→ "Are there any mature libraries/projects that have done something similar?"
   └─→ Let AI help you search, evaluate, and recommend

3. Understand the Interfaces
   └─→ Feed the official documentation to AI
   └─→ AI summarizes: what is the input, what is the output

4. Describe the Connection
   └─→ "The output of A should become the input of B"
   └─→ AI generates glue code

5. Validate and Run
   └─→ Runs successfully → Done
   └─→ Errors → Give the errors to AI, continue gluing

🔥 Classic Case Study

Case: Polymarket Data Analysis Bot

Requirement: Real-time acquisition of Polymarket data, analysis, and push to Telegram

Traditional Approach: Write a crawler, analysis logic, and bot from scratch → 3000 lines of code, 2 weeks

Glue Approach:

Wheel 1: polymarket-py (Official SDK)
Wheel 2: pandas (Data Analysis)
Wheel 3: python-telegram-bot (Message Push)

Glue Code: 50 lines
Development Time: 2 hours

📚 Further Reading

🎖️ Summary

If you can copy, don't write. If you can connect, don't build. If you can reuse, don't originate.

Glue Coding is the ultimate evolution of Vibe Coding.

It's not laziness; it's the highest embodiment of engineering wisdom —

Leveraging maximum productivity with minimal original code.

This is the silver bullet software engineering has been waiting for for 50 years.

"The best code is no code at all. The second best is glue code."

Glue Coding Methodology

1. Definition of Glue Coding

Glue Coding is a new software construction approach, with its core philosophy being:

Almost entirely reusing mature open-source components, combining them into a complete system with minimal "glue code"

It emphasizes "connecting" rather than "creating," and is especially efficient in the AI era.

2. Background

Traditional software engineering often requires developers to:

  • Design architecture
  • Write logic themselves
  • Manually handle various details
  • Reinvent the wheel repeatedly

This leads to high development costs, long cycles, and low success rates.

However, the current ecosystem has fundamentally changed:

  • There are countless mature open-source libraries on GitHub
  • Frameworks cover various scenarios (Web, AI, distributed, model inference…)
  • GPT / Grok can help search, analyze, and combine these projects

In this environment, writing code from scratch is no longer the most efficient way.

Thus, "Glue Coding" has emerged as a new paradigm.

3. Core Principles of Glue Coding

3.1 Don't write what can be avoided, write as little as possible

Any functionality with an existing mature implementation should not be reinvented.

3.2 Copy-paste whenever possible

Directly copying and using community-validated code is a normal engineering process, not laziness.

3.3 Stand on the shoulders of giants, rather than trying to become one

Utilize existing frameworks instead of trying to write a "better wheel" yourself.

3.4 Do not modify the original repository code

All open-source libraries should ideally remain immutable and be used as black boxes.

3.5 Minimize custom code

The code you write should only be responsible for:

  • Combination
  • Invocation
  • Encapsulation
  • Adaptation

This is what is called the glue layer.

4. Standard Process of Glue Coding

4.1 Clarify Requirements

Break down the system's desired functionalities into individual requirements.

4.2 Use GPT/Grok to Deconstruct Requirements

Let AI refine requirements into reusable modules, capabilities, and corresponding subtasks.

4.3 Search for Existing Open-Source Implementations

Utilize GPT's web browsing capabilities (e.g., Grok):

  • Search for corresponding GitHub repositories for each sub-requirement
  • Check for existing reusable components
  • Compare quality, implementation methods, licenses, etc.

🔍 Use GitHub Topics to Precisely Find Wheels

Method: Let AI help you find GitHub Topics corresponding to your needs, then browse popular repositories under that topic.

Example Prompt:

I need to implement [Your Requirement]. Please help me:
1. Analyze which technical fields this requirement might involve
2. Recommend corresponding GitHub Topics keywords
3. Provide GitHub Topics links (format: https://github.com/topics/xxx)

Common Topics Examples:

Requirement Recommended Topic
Telegram Bot telegram-bot
Data Analysis data-analysis
AI Agent ai-agent
CLI Tool cli
Web Scraper web-scraping

Advanced Tips:

4.4 Download and Organize Repositories

Pull the selected repositories locally and organize them by category.

4.5 Organize by Architectural System

Place these repositories within the project structure, for example:

/services
/libs
/third_party
/glue

And emphasize: Open-source repositories, as third-party dependencies, must absolutely not be modified.

4.6 Write Glue Layer Code

The role of glue code includes:

  • Encapsulating interfaces
  • Unifying input and output
  • Connecting different components
  • Implementing minimal business logic

The final system is composed of multiple mature modules.

5. Value of Glue Coding

5.1 Extremely High Success Rate

Because it uses community-validated, mature code.

5.2 Extremely Fast Development Speed

A large amount of functionality can be directly reused.

5.3 Reduced Costs

Time costs, maintenance costs, and learning costs are significantly reduced.

5.4 More Stable Systems

Relies on mature frameworks rather than individual implementations.

5.5 Easy to Extend

Capabilities can be easily upgraded by replacing components.

5.6 Strong Synergy with AI

GPT can assist in searching, deconstructing, and integrating, making it a natural enhancer for glue engineering.

6. Glue Coding vs. Traditional Development

Project Traditional Development Glue Coding
Feature Implementation Write yourself Reuse open-source
Workload Large Much smaller
Success Rate Uncertain High
Speed Slow Extremely fast
Error Rate Prone to pitfalls Uses mature solutions
Focus "Building wheels" "Combining wheels"

7. Typical Application Scenarios for Glue Coding

  • Rapid prototype development
  • Small teams building large systems
  • AI applications/model inference platforms
  • Data processing pipelines
  • Internal tool development
  • System Integration

8. Future: Glue Engineering will Become the New Mainstream Programming Paradigm

As AI capabilities continue to strengthen, future developers will no longer need to write large amounts of code themselves, but rather:

  • Find wheels
  • Combine wheels
  • Intelligently connect components
  • Build complex systems at extremely low cost

Glue Coding will become the new standard for software productivity.