Everyone Knows You're Using AI: Part 2
i can't remember the last time
i can't remember the last time i built an entire project by myself. like, all of it. every line, no autocomplete doing half the thinking, no model filling in the boring parts.
it's been over two years. genuinely.
and i'm not proud of it or ashamed of it. it's just true. somewhere along the way the keyboard stopped being where the work happened.
you're using it too
i'm not special here. you're using it too. maybe not for everything, but you are.
and if you genuinely write every line by hand, no AI anywhere — i have questions, honestly. is it principle? do you just enjoy it more that way? is it that you don't trust the output, or that you don't trust what leaning on it does to your own skill over time? i'm not asking to argue. i'm actually curious what keeps you there.
but most of us aren't there anymore. we stopped a while ago and just don't say it out loud, like it's a thing to be a little embarrassed about.
so "do you use AI" isn't an interesting question anymore. basically everyone does. the question that actually matters now is the quieter one: how well do you use it?
i haven't opened the code
i'm building pulse-cmo right now — a small autonomous marketing agent for indie founders.
here's the part that still feels strange to say: i haven't opened the code in an IDE. not once. i live inside claude code, describe what i want, and watch the idea turn into a real, running thing in front of me. i'm steering. i'm not typing.
a couple years ago that sentence would've sounded insane to me.
the dopamine moved
and i'll be honest — i miss something.
there was a specific kind of fun in the old way. hunting a bug at 1am. the dumb little high when you finally fix it. building the whole thing brick by brick and knowing every corner of it because you laid every brick yourself. that part got quiet.
but the dopamine didn't leave. it just moved. now the hit is watching an idea i had ten minutes ago already working. it's a different drug. took me a while to admit i actually like it.
how well, though
here's the thing i keep coming back to: using AI well is a skill. a real one.
the model will happily build you the wrong thing, beautifully. knowing what you actually want, handing it the right context, noticing the exact moment it starts going sideways, having the taste to say "no, not like that" — that's the work now. the typing was never the hard part. the thinking still is.
give the same claude code to ten people and you'll get ten completely different results. some ship real products. some sit in a loop asking it to fix the same error for an hour. same tool. the whole difference is the person holding it.
so, my pov
that's really all i wanted to say. AI is only as good as the person using it.
it's not coming for the people who think clearly and know where they're going. it's leverage — loud, fast leverage. it makes good judgment faster, and it makes bad judgment faster too. the tool got incredible. but it's still a tool. you're still the one who has to know what you're building and why.
i lost a little of the old fun. i gained something i didn't expect. and i'm using it as well as i know how to, which is the only part i actually control.
that's enough for me.
nothing to do with any of this. i just put a photo in every post. you know the rules by now :)
A Note on Authorship
⚠️ Experimental Message
This post about using AI was, obviously, written with AI. I sat in the editor and shaped every line of it. Which is kind of the whole point.
P.S. — i'll probably open the pulse-cmo code in an IDE eventually. or maybe i won't. we'll see.