This is what I came to comment. I'm seeing this more and more on HN of all places. Commenters are essentially describing TDD as how they use AI but don't seem to know that is what they are doing. (Without the tests though.)
In my opinion TDD is antithetical to this process.
The primary reason is because what you are rapidly refactoring in these early prototypes/revisions are the meta structure and the contacts.
Before AI the cost of putting tests on from the beginning or TTD slowed your iteration speed dramatically.
In the early prototypes what you are figuring out is the actual shape of the problem and what the best division of responsibilities and how to fit them together to fit the vision for how the code will be required to evolve.
Now with AI, you can let the AI build test harnesses at little velocity cost, but TDD is still not the general approach.
There are multiple schools to TDD, sounds like you were exposed to the kind that aims for coverage vs domain behavior.
Like any framework they all have costs,benefits, and places they work and others that they don’t.
Unless taking time to figure out what your inputs and expected outputs, the schools of thought that targeted writing all tests and even implement detail tests I would agree with you.
If you focus on writing inputs vs outputs, especially during a spike, I need to take prompt engineering classes from you
And you have to pay special attention to the tests written by LLMs. I catch them mocking when they shouldn't, passing tests that don't actually pass, etc.
Maybe I am more of a Leet coder than I think?