Mise en Place Methodology for Agentic Coding

A new arXiv paper (2605.05400) critiques the dominant 'vibe coding' workflow in AI-assisted software development, arguing it creates an alignment problem where agents produce code requiring extensive debugging. The authors propose a three-phase preparation methodology called Mise en Place (MEP), borrowed from culinary practice: contextual grounding (externalizing domain knowledge), collaborative specification (human-agent dialogue for design artifacts), and task decomposition (structured task records). The methodology was applied during a competitive hackathon, yielding positive results. The paper is authored by researchers from an undisclosed institution and is available on arXiv.