I was getting frustrated with how AI coding agents navigate large repos, so I started building some helper scripts

I've been spending a lot of time using Codex and Antigravity on a fairly large Laravel + React project. After a while I noticed the same patterns over and over again. The agent would: read way more terminal output than necessary dump huge files just to inspect a single function repeat similar searches across multiple folders burn through context on information it never actually used end up asking for approval dozens of times because of lots of tiny shell commands The models themselves weren't really the problem. The workflow was. So I started writing a small set of PowerShell helper scripts to guide repository navigation instead of letting the agent freely explore everything. Things like: compacting noisy build/test output investigating a feature across multiple folders with a single command reading specific symbols instead of entire files keeping searches focused reducing repeated repository exploration I'm still experimenting with the workflow, but it's already made a noticeable difference for me. I'm curious how everyone else is approaching this. Do you just let your agent explore freely, or have you built your own tooling/rules to keep context usage under control? If people are interested, I'm happy to share what I've built in the comments.